Posto avea fine al suo ragionamento
l'alto dottore, e attento guardava
ne la mia vista s'io parea contento;
e io, cui nova sete ancor frugava,
di fuor tacea, e dentro dicea: “Forse
lo troppo dimandar ch'io fo li grava.”
Ma quel padre verace, che s'accorse
del timido voler che non s'apriva,
parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse.
Ond'io: “Maestro, il mio veder s'avviva
sì nel tuo lume, ch'io discerno chiaro
quanto la tua ragion parta o descriva.
Però ti prego, dolce padre caro,
che mi dimostri amore, a cui reduci
ogne buono operare e 'l suo contraro.”
“Drizza,” disse, “ver' me l'agute luci
de lo 'ntelletto, e fieti manifesto
l'error de' ciechi che si fanno duci.
L'animo, ch'è creato ad amar presto,
ad ogne cosa è mobile che piace,
tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto.
Vostra apprensiva da esser verace
tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega,
sì che l'animo ad essa volger face;
e se, rivolto, inver' di lei si piega,
quel piegare è amor, quell' è natura
che per piacer di novo in voi si lega.
Poi, come 'l foco movesi in altura
per la sua forma ch'è nata a salire
là dove più in sua matera dura,
così l'animo preso entra in disire,
ch'è moto spiritale, e mai non posa
fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire.
Or ti puote apparer quant' è nascosa
la veritate a la gente ch'avvera
ciascun amore in sé laudabil cosa;
però che forse appar la sua matera
sempre esser buona, ma non ciascun segno
è buono, ancor che buona sia la cera.”
“Le tue parole e 'l mio seguace ingegno,”
rispuos' io lui, “m'hanno amor discoverto,
ma ciò m'ha fatto di dubbiar più pregno;
ché, s'amore è di fuori a noi offerto
e l'anima non va con altro piede,
se dritta o torta va, non è suo merto.”
Ed elli a me: “Quanto ragion qui vede,
dir ti poss' io; da indi in là t'aspetta
pur a Beatrice, ch'è opra di fede.
Ogne forma sustanzïal, che setta
è da matera ed è con lei unita,
specifica vertute ha in sé colletta,
la qual sanza operar non è sentita,
né si dimostra mai che per effetto,
come per verdi fronde in pianta vita.
Però, là onde vegna lo 'ntelletto
de le prime notizie, omo non sape,
e de' primi appetibili l'affetto,
che sono in voi sì come studio in ape
di far lo mele; e questa prima voglia
merto di lode o di biasmo non cape.
Or perché a questa ogn' altra si raccoglia
innata v'è la virtù che consiglia,
e de l'assenso de' tener la soglia.
Quest' è 'l principio là onde si piglia
ragion di meritare in voi, secondo
che buoni e rei amori accoglie e viglia.
Color che ragionando andaro al fondo,
s'accorser d'esta innata libertate;
però moralità lasciaro al mondo.
Onde, poniam che di necessitate
surga ogne amor che dentro a voi s'accende,
di ritenerlo è in voi la podestate.
La nobile virtù Beatrice intende
per lo libero arbitrio, e però guarda
che l'abbi a mente, s'a parlar ten prende.”
La luna, quasi a mezza notte tarda,
facea le stelle a noi parer più rade,
fatta com' un secchion che tuttor arda;
e correa contra 'l ciel per quelle strade
che 'l sole infiamma allor che quel da Roma
tra ' Sardi e ' Corsi il vede quando cade.
E quell' ombra gentil per cui si noma
Pietola più che villa mantoana,
del mio carcar diposta avea la soma;
per ch'io, che la ragione aperta e piana
sovra le mie quistioni avea ricolta,
stava com' om che sonnolento vana.
Ma questa sonnolenza mi fu tolta
subitamente da gente che dopo
le nostre spalle a noi era già volta.
E quale Ismeno già vide e Asopo
lungo di sé di notte furia e calca,
pur che i Teban di Bacco avesser uopo,
cotal per quel giron suo passo falca,
per quel ch'io vidi di color, venendo,
cui buon volere e giusto amor cavalca.
Tosto fur sovr' a noi, perché correndo
si movea tutta quella turba magna;
e due dinanzi gridavan piangendo:
“Maria corse con fretta a la montagna;
e Cesare, per soggiogare Ilerda,
punse Marsilia e poi corse in Ispagna.”
“Ratto, ratto, che 'l tempo non si perda
per poco amor,” gridavan li altri appresso,
“che studio di ben far grazia rinverda.”
“O gente in cui fervore aguto adesso
ricompie forse negligenza e indugio
da voi per tepidezza in ben far messo,
questi che vive, e certo i' non vi bugio,
vuole andar sù, pur che 'l sol ne riluca;
però ne dite ond' è presso il pertugio.”
Parole furon queste del mio duca;
e un di quelli spirti disse: “Vieni
di retro a noi, e troverai la buca.
Noi siam di voglia a muoverci sì pieni,
che restar non potem; però perdona,
se villania nostra giustizia tieni.
Io fui abate in San Zeno a Verona
sotto lo 'mperio del buon Barbarossa,
di cui dolente ancor Milan ragiona.
E tale ha già l'un piè dentro la fossa,
che tosto piangerà quel monastero,
e tristo fia d'avere avuta possa;
perché suo figlio, mal del corpo intero,
e de la mente peggio, e che mal nacque,
ha posto in loco di suo pastor vero.”
Io non so se più disse o s'ei si tacque,
tant' era già di là da noi trascorso;
ma questo intesi, e ritener mi piacque.
E quei che m'era ad ogne uopo soccorso
disse: “Volgiti qua: vedine due
venir dando a l'accidïa di morso.”
Di retro a tutti dicean: “Prima fue
morta la gente a cui il mar s'aperse,
che vedesse Iordan le rede sue.
E quella che l'affanno non sofferse
fino a la fine col figlio d'Anchise
sé stessa a vita sanza gloria offerse.”
Poi quando fuor da noi tanto divise
quell' ombre, che veder più non potiersi,
novo pensiero dentro a me si mise,
del qual più altri nacquero e diversi;
e tanto d'uno in altro vaneggiai,
che li occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,
e 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai.
An end had put unto his reasoning
The lofty Teacher, and attent was looking
Into my face, if I appeared content;
And I, whom a new thirst still goaded on,
Without was mute, and said within: "Perchance
The too much questioning I make annoys him."
But that true Father, who had comprehended
The timid wish, that opened not itself,
By speaking gave me hardihood to speak.
Whence I: "My sight is, Master, vivified
So in thy light, that clearly I discern
Whate'er thy speech importeth or describes.
Therefore I thee entreat, sweet Father dear,
To teach me love, to which thou dost refer
Every good action and its contrary."
"Direct," he said, "towards me the keen eyes
Of intellect, and clear will be to thee
The error of the blind, who would be leaders.
The soul, which is created apt to love,
Is mobile unto everything that pleases,
Soon as by pleasure she is waked to action.
Your apprehension from some real thing
An image draws, and in yourselves displays it
So that it makes the soul turn unto it.
And if, when turned, towards it she incline,
Love is that inclination; it is nature,
Which is by pleasure bound in you anew
Then even as the fire doth upward move
By its own form, which to ascend is born,
Where longest in its matter it endures,
So comes the captive soul into desire,
Which is a motion spiritual, and ne'er rests
Until she doth enjoy the thing beloved.
Now may apparent be to thee how hidden
The truth is from those people, who aver
All love is in itself a laudable thing;
Because its matter may perchance appear
Aye to be good; but yet not each impression
Is good, albeit good may be the wax."
"Thy words, and my sequacious intellect,"
I answered him, "have love revealed to me;
But that has made me more impregned with doubt;
For if love from without be offered us,
And with another foot the soul go not,
If right or wrong she go, 'tis not her merit."
And he to me: "What reason seeth here,
Myself can tell thee; beyond that await
For Beatrice, since 'tis a work of faith.
Every substantial form, that segregate
From matter is, and with it is united,
Specific power has in itself collected,
Which without act is not perceptible,
Nor shows itself except by its effect,
As life does in a plant by the green leaves.
But still, whence cometh the intelligence
Of the first notions, man is ignorant,
And the affection for the first allurements,
Which are in you as instinct in the bee
To make its honey; and this first desire
Merit of praise or blame containeth not.
Now, that to this all others may be gathered,
Innate within you is the power that counsels,
And it should keep the threshold of assent.
This is the principle, from which is taken
Occasion of desert in you, according
As good and guilty loves it takes and winnows.
Those who, in reasoning, to the bottom went,
Were of this innate liberty aware,
Therefore bequeathed they Ethics to the world.
Supposing, then, that from necessity
Springs every love that is within you kindled,
Within yourselves the power is to restrain it.
The noble virtue Beatrice understands
By the free will; and therefore see that thou
Bear it in mind, if she should speak of it."
The moon, belated almost unto midnight,
Now made the stars appear to us more rare,
Formed like a bucket, that is all ablaze,
And counter to the heavens ran through those paths
Which the sun sets aflame, when he of Rome
Sees it 'twixt Sardes and Corsicans go down;
And that patrician shade, for whom is named
Pietola more than any Mantuan town,
Had laid aside the burden of my lading;
Whence I, who reason manifest and plain
In answer to my questions had received,
Stood like a man in drowsy reverie.
But taken from me was this drowsiness
Suddenly by a people, that behind
Our backs already had come round to us.
And as, of old, Ismenus and Asopus
Beside them saw at night the rush and throng,
If but the Thebans were in need of Bacchus,
So they along that circle curve their step,
From what I saw of those approaching us,
Who by good-will and righteous love are ridden.
Full soon they were upon us, because running
Moved onward all that mighty multitude,
And two in the advance cried out, lamenting,
"Mary in haste unto the mountain ran,
And Caesar, that he might subdue Ilerda,
Thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain."
"Quick! quick! so that the time may not be lost
By little love!" forthwith the others cried,
"For ardour in well-doing freshens grace!"
"O folk, in whom an eager fervour now
Supplies perhaps delay and negligence,
Put by you in well-doing, through lukewarmness,
This one who lives, and truly I lie not,
Would fain go up, if but the sun relight us;
So tell us where the passage nearest is."
These were the words of him who was my Guide;
And some one of those spirits said: "Come on
Behind us, and the opening shalt thou find;
So full of longing are we to move onward,
That stay we cannot; therefore pardon us,
If thou for churlishness our justice take.
I was San Zeno's Abbot at Verona,
Under the empire of good Barbarossa,
Of whom still sorrowing Milan holds discourse;
And he has one foot in the grave already,
Who shall erelong lament that monastery,
And sorry be of having there had power,
Because his son, in his whole body sick,
And worse in mind, and who was evil-born,
He put into the place of its true pastor."
If more he said, or silent was, I know not,
He had already passed so far beyond us;
But this I heard, and to retain it pleased me.
And he who was in every need my succour
Said: "Turn thee hitherward; see two of them
Come fastening upon slothfulness their teeth."
In rear of all they shouted: "Sooner were
The people dead to whom the sea was opened,
Than their inheritors the Jordan saw;
And those who the fatigue did not endure
Unto the issue, with Anchises' son,
Themselves to life withouten glory offered."
Then when from us so separated were
Those shades, that they no longer could be seen,
Within me a new thought did entrance find,
Whence others many and diverse were born;
And so I lapsed from one into another,
That in a reverie mine eyes I closed,
And meditation into dream transmuted.
This canto continues the flow of the last with no demarcation in the text itself of a terminus or of a new beginning. As Bosco points out in his introductory note to the two cantos, they form a unit developed on a chiastic pattern:
XVII.1-69 (narrative)
XVII.70-139 (instruction)
XVIII.1-75 (instruction)
XVIII.76-145 (narrative)
Further, these two cantos form a larger unit with Purgatorio XVI, which is similarly divided into two large blocks of material: 1-63 (narrative) and 64-145 (Marco's instruction). In this way the numerical center of the Commedia, cantos 49-51, is made more noticeable. (For the midpoint with respect to the number of lines in the poem, see the note to Purg. XVII.118-119.)
Pier Giorgio Ricci (“Il Canto XVIII del Purgatorio,” in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1970]), p. 252, suggests that Dante spreads Virgil's full canto's worth (145 verses) of speechifying over two cantos so as not to strain the reader's patience.
Virgil's 'Scholastic' credentials seem strong. See Giuseppe Tarozzi's appreciation (Il canto XVIII del “Purgatorio” [“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”] [Florence: Sansoni, 1901]), p. 7: Virgil 'here represents the idealized figure of the medieval docent.' A close analysis of his discourse in the preceding canto, such as may be found, in English, in Singleton's commentary, reveals a line of argument that is closely based on Thomistic texts. In keeping with such discourse and for the first time since Inferno XVI.48, Virgil is saluted by his pupil as 'professor' (dottore). For the other terms used to describe Virgil's role as guide in the poem, see the note to Inferno II.140. (Virgil is referred to as dottore elsewhere as follows: Inf. V.70, Inf. V.123, Inf. XVI.13, Inf. XVI.48, Purg. XXI.22, Purg. XXI.131, Purg. XXIV.14).
In fact, Virgil has rarely been referred to or addressed by Dante with such fervent admiration as here and shortly later in this canto, when he will be 'padre verace' (true father – 7), 'Maestro' (Master – 10), and then 'father' again (13). See the note to vv. 17-18.
In this and the next canto the protagonist's forward movement in understanding is underlined by the adjective nuovo (new): used here for his new 'thirst,' at verse 141 for his 'new thought' in reaction to the departure of the penitents in Sloth, and at Purg. XIX.56, in his reference to the new dream he has just had on this terrace.
Dante's 'timid wish' should probably be considered related to intellectual sloth (see Purg. XVII.130, lento amore [laggard love]). How could Dante have considered himself 'timid' in seeking the truth? Had he involved himself in a less than urgent affection for the good, the charge would seem appropriate. Since it is the author who makes the charge, it might seem that he himself believed that he did not always display the zeal necessary for loving well.
Why, one might ask, after Virgil's long speech in the last canto, should Dante want Virgil to 'expound' love when he seems just now to have finished (with suitable fanfare) doing precisely that? What the protagonist means is 'expatiate upon,' 'explain more precisely,' the argument just now presented. The word dimostrare is here, in fact, a verb based on the Latin noun demonstratio, as used to refer to the development of proofs by means of syllogistic demonstration. See Paradiso XXIV.96.
Virgil's words reflect Matthew 15:14, where Jesus says that the Pharisees are blind guides of the blind who follow them, adding that guide and flock shall all end up falling into a ditch.
In Convivio I.xi.4 Dante cites this passage, directing its barb against 'those wicked Italians who praise the vernacular of others while disparaging their own' (Conv. I.xi.1) and who are therefore likewise headed toward disaster. As Francesco Mazzoni argues (“Latini, Brunetto” [ED.1971.3], p. 580b), in this connection it is difficult not to think of Dante's fellow Florentine Brunetto Latini, who wrote his encyclopedic Tresor in French rather than in his native vernacular (see André Pézard [Dante sous la pluie de feu (Paris: Vrin, 1950)] for extensive development of this idea). Also to be considered are the words, written shortly before or shortly after this passage (on the problems of dating Dve and Conv. see Hollander [Dante: A Life in Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)], pp. 54-55), in De vulgari eloquentia I.xiii.1, when Dante 'exiles' Brunetto from the illustrious and courtly vernacular that he is championing, relegating him to the ash heap of the municipal vernacular, the 'street talk' that is to be avoided by serious poets. In what seems to have been a change of heart, Brunetto, in the fifteenth canto of Inferno, will be treated generously as Dante's vernacular 'teacher' (Inf. XV.85), just as Virgil was his first Latin guide. It seems clear that these two are joined only by Guido Guinizzelli as explicitly paternal figures of writerly authority for the Tuscan poet.
Dante refers to, whether as protagonist or as poet, various 'fathers' in the course of the poem (this is to exclude 'fathers' addressed by other characters). Of those listed below, those numbered 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 are only addressed or referred to once; all the others have at least two other paternal moments for Dante, except for St. Bernard, who has only one other; Virgil leads all 'fathers' with a dozen other occurrences. Of these twelve 'fathers,' seven are addressed, those numbered 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12. The parenthetic reference is to the first appearance of each 'father.'
(1) Virgil (Inf. VIII.110)
(2) Brunetto Latini (Inf. XV.83)
(3) Cato of Utica (Purg. I.33)
(4) Guido Guinizzelli (Purg. XXVI.97)
(5) God (addressed as 'good Apollo,' Par. I.28)
(6) St. Francis (Par. XI.85)
(7) Cacciaguida (Par. XVI.16)
(8) St. Benedict (Par. XXII.58)
(9) the sun (Par. XXII.116)
(10) St. Peter (Par. XXIV.62)
(11) Adam (Par. XXVI.92)
(12) St. Bernard (Par. XXXI.63)
Frank Ordiway's lengthy article, “Brunetto and Dante,” completed in draft ca. 1992 but still under revision, offers detailed analysis of the program of Dante's 'fathers' in the poem. See, for his first treatment of this material, his doctoral dissertation (Dante, Chaucer, and the Poetics of the Past [unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1990]).
Virgil, responding to Dante's request, carries his analysis of the loving human mind to the next level, the role of the rational soul in determining human choice and, therefore, action. This tercet establishes the subject of Virgil's difficult clarification (vv. 22-39): how mind (the rational soul, created directly by God and instilled in the embryo last [see Purg. XXV.67-75]) reacts appetitively to external things.
The apprensiva (power of perception), already implicitly referred to in Dante's apostrophe of the imaginativa (faculty of imagination) in Purgatorio XVII.13-15, is the faculty of perception that reacts to the capturing of an image (referred to here as an intenzione) of external reality in the imaginazione or fantasia (see the note to verse 13-18). The mind, as opposed to the 'natural desire' of the senses (see Purg. XVII.93 for this distinction), which is always errorless, is responsible for its choices and may err. If its perception inclines toward what it contemplates, that is what we call love.
For a discussion of this passage in light of the Aristotelian and Arabic roots of Dante's word intenzione, see the entry for that term by Tullio Gregory (ED.1971.3), pp. 480b-481b.
Desire, love in action, now continues by extending toward its goal and remaining in this state as long as it takes pleasure in its appetition. (For fire as an example of 'natural desire,' see the note to Purg. XVII.91-92.) Thus here Dante is comparing intellectual desire to natural desire, but also insisting on the distance between them. Natural desire can never be culpable (e.g., fire always 'desires' to rise – that is its natural inclination). There is perhaps no moment in the poem of greater danger to its essential philosophical position. Is human desire – for money, food, or sexual pleasure – not as 'natural' as this? Does anyone not desire these things? Dante's attempt to persuade us, as he may well have realized, reflects that of another dottore and maestro, Jesus. He, as the Gospels amply testify, also spoke frequently, in his parables, in terms of human desires that all could understand, e.g., of money, agriculture, marriage. In all cases the listener is encouraged, even impelled, to understand that such pleasures, as great as they may be, will seem as nothing compared to the joys of Heaven.
Padoan (“Purgatorio Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), pp. 668-70, suggests that Dante's definition of love in this canto intrinsically corrects Francesca's claims for the ineluctable nature of passionate love (Inf. V.103).
Dante was surely right to let his language here reflect an essentially sexual view of love. Consider the last verse of this part of the passage, 'fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire' (as long as it enjoys the thing it loves [for this understanding of the conjunction fin che see Francesco Mazzoni, cited by Bosco/Reggio in their commentary on this passage; in opposition, reading 'until it attains the thing it loves' as being more Thomistic, see Alfred A. Triolo (Purgatorio XVIII,“ in Dante's ”Divine Comedy,“ Introductory Readings II: ”Purgatorio,“ ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis (virginiana), 12, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1993]), p. 268]). Arriving at this point in the argument, a reader would have to be pardoned for believing that whatever good the spirit of love pursues is ipso facto good, just as the protagonist himself will shortly seem to believe (vv. 43-45). But what is the nature of the 'moto spiritale' (movement of the spirit) of the 'captive mind'? That question is reflected in the crucial and concluding portion of Virgil's discourse.
The main candidates for this unenviable denomination, the errant folk who believe that all love is good (a proposition, as we have seen, that we might have considered unassailable a moment ago), have been Epicureans. In the modern period this view is first offered by Scartazzini (comm. to verse 35) but then is held by many twentieth-century commentators. Grabher (comm. to vv. 19-39) is of the opinion that this is the position of all love poets, including the younger Dante. His view, sometimes combined with that of Scartazzini, has grown increasingly attractive to recent commentators. Clearly, anyone who believes that love is in itself and always praiseworthy is among this group.
The 'imprint' on the 'wax' of our love becomes the crucial symbolic expression of the concept developed here. The 'wax' clearly refers to the innate human potential to love, which is 'stamped' by the image that the mind has extracted from reality; that 'stamp' may either be worthy or unworthy, while the 'wax' is always worthy.
It is, despite Virgil's last insistence on the (implicit) need for the proper exercise of the free will in choosing the objects of one's desire, understandable that Dante, up to this point, believes that the mind is completely responsive to internalized (by the apprensiva) external stimuli (the intenzione – see verse 23), and thus irreprehensible in whatever choice it makes.
This passage offers perhaps the only apparently material evidence in the poem that would tie both Virgil and Beatrice to an allegorical status, his role being that of Reason, hers, Faith. But see Hollander (”Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,“ Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990]), p. 42, n. 2: 'It is from Virgil's lips that we first hear the name Beatrice... in Purgatorio: VI.46; XV.77; XVIII.48. In her first three nominal presences in this cantica... she is associated first with hope (VI.32), then with love (XV.68; XV.71; XV,74), then with faith.' Thus associated with the three theological virtues, Beatrice can be seen as possessing all of them; she probably should not be seen as representing any one of them, or as having an 'allegorical' status in this poem.
In keeping with all of the ratiocination found in this canto, words for 'reason' in various noun and verb forms are found in it far more than in any other (Purg. XXII finishes a distant second with four occurrences), as follows: vv. 1, 12, 46, 65, 67, 85, 120.
The three cantos at the center of Purgatorio devote what may seem immoderate space to what Benedetto Croce disliked in Dante, his 'non-poesia,' his 'structure,' his mere allotria (the 'extraneous matter' of philosophy or theology that Croce deprecated in Dante; opposing such views, Fernando Salsano [”Purgatorio Canto XV,“ in Lectura Dantis Scaligera (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967)], p. 542, speaks of the Comedy as 'un poema e non un libro di poesie'). For an examination of what Croce's kind of aestheticizing denies to Dante's poem, precisely the validity and beauty of its conceptual structure, see Giorgio Stabile (”Cosmologia e teologia nella Commedia: la caduta di Lucifero e il rovesciamento del mondo,“ Letture classensi 12 [1983]), pp. 139-44. Stabile is surely correct in arguing that Croce's oppositional binome structure/poetry fails to account for the aesthetic possibilities of Dante's versified conceptual thinking. Marco's long speech in XVI (65-129), Virgil's in XVII (91-139), and Virgil's concluding two in this canto (16-39; 49-75) should be looked upon, as should the related discursive portions of Cantos XXIV and XXV, as part of a continuing development of a complex statement about the nature and function of love, presented from different vantage points. In Canto XXIV, Dante's presentation of the Holy Spirit's creative role in helping to make the writings of a handful of poets acceptable to God prepares for the following treatment in Canto XXV of the way the Holy Spirit is breathed into all of us, thus explaining how eventually a very few of us may become acceptable to God as His saints in paradise. In these three cantos Marco the Lombard explains the need for proper civil governance because our free will may elsewise lead us astray, while Virgil takes up a related topic, the need for us individually to use our free will correctly in choosing and responding to the objects of our attention and affection.
The only 'substantial form' to be both distinct from matter and joined to it is the human soul, which is formed by pure divine intellect (as are the angels) and by emotional and vegetative powers (as are the beasts). Its specifica vertute (defining disposition), as we learn at vv. 55-57, is composed of primal intellect and primal will, and is only perceptible in the action of the soul, not in itself. Now, leaving intellection out of consideration, Virgil continues: We have no recollection or current understanding of our original inclination (to love God), yet we do demonstrate its presence in us, as the eagerness of bees for making honey reveals their 'defining disposition.' This kind of (natural) will exists beyond and before moral assent.
This innate will (see Purg. XXI.105, la virtù che vuole [the power that wills]) must accord with la virtù che consiglia ('the faculty that counsels'), the higher intellect that should govern all our choices; our ability to choose good and to discard wrongful affections is the ground for the measurement of our moral condition.
Aristotle's Ethics is probably Dante's main source for his views on morality (a view supported by Benvenuto da Imola [comm. to vv. 67-75]). However, to account for the plurality of the reference, Poletto (comm. to these verses) sensibly refers to Dante's own earlier phrasing (found in the words of his guide, Virgil), 'I speak of Aristotle and of Plato / and of many others' (Purg. III.43-44).
Virgil's lengthy discourse concludes with his final insistence on the pivotal role of free will in individual moral responsibility and looks forward (as Benvenuto was perhaps the first to realize [see his comm. to vv. 67-75]) to Beatrice's remarks on the subject in Paradiso V.19-24, asseverating that the freedom of the will is the greatest of God's gifts to humankind. Many of the early commentators find this a convenient place for them to reassert the 'allegorical' valence of Beatrice, here interpreted as 'Theology.' In the past 150 years most commentators are content to leave the allegorical equation in abeyance, merely referring to Beatrice as herself.
Returning to narrative, the poet returns to telling the time. The moon, as the slowest 'planet' in Dante's astronomy, is fittingly the celestial body referred to on the terrace of Sloth. Its appearance is compared by Benvenuto (comm. to these lines) to the semicircular fire in a lighthouse, glowing throughout the night. Commentators are divided as to exactly what is involved here, i.e., whether it is the moon's rising that is referred to or its current position in the sky. Singleton's discussion (comm. to vv. 76-78) resuscitates Edward Moore's early essay (The Time References in the ”Divina Commedia“ [London 1887]) to support the notion that there is no reference here to moonrise (the cause of endless resultant debate in the commentaries about the precise hour that would then be indicated), but to the moon being high enough in the sky to dim the brightness of the stars at the approach of midnight.
The moon, Dante would seem to be saying, was roughly on the same path taken by the sun when it sets in the southwest (when seen from Rome) in late November, between Sardinia and Corsica.
The protagonist's gratitude to Virgil is expressed with a salute to his birthplace, Pietola ('Andes' in Roman times). Some early commentators read the phrase 'più che villa mantoana' to mean 'more than the city Mantua,' while the meaning is nearly certainly 'more than any Mantuan town,' i.e., any other town in the vicinity of the city, not Mantua itself, as Padoan (”Purgatorio Canto XVIII,“ in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), p. 688n., agrees.
Again a detail – Dante's somnolence – establishes a connection with Sloth.
These penitents, as opposed to the wrathful, move in the same counterclockwise direction that is followed by Dante and Virgil. It would seem that, while the movement of Dante to the right is morally determined, that of the penitents is not, is rather the result of aesthetic considerations. Review of the various groups that are in motion suggests that such is the case. Below the gate, we see that the excommunicate are moving rightwards (Purg. III.59), while the late-repentant seem to be heading to the left (Purg. V.23). On the terraces, the prideful seem to be moving right (Purg. X.100), while the wrathful are headed left (Purg. XV.142). Here in Sloth the penitents come from behind Virgil and Dante but are moving in the same direction (Purg. XVIII.90). Farther up the mountain the penitent gluttons are also moving counterclockwise (Purg. XXIII.19-20), while the two distinct bands of the lustful proceed in two different directions (Purg. XXVI.29).
This is a fairly rare occurrence in Purgatorio, a simile based explicitly on classical materials (but see Purg. IX.34-42, for the similetic reference to Statius's Achilles). And there will not be another (now based on a passage in Lucan) until Purgatorio XXIV.64-69.
Ismenus and Asopus are names of rivers, the first flowing through the city of Thebes, the second near it. Beginning with Jacopo della Lana (comm. to these verses), commentators have offered the opinion, from time to time, that Dante's source here is Statius (Thebaid IX). Ismenos is named at IX.404, his 'brother' Asopos at IX.449. That passage includes two references to the orgiastic Bacchic rites (IX.434-436; 478-480) to which Dante here refers.
Running in a group to counteract the painful memory of their solitary slothful behaviors on earth, all these gathered penitents may put contemporary readers in mind of the massed crowds of runners in metropolitan marathons.
With the exception of the concluding interaction with the angel in the following canto, separated by Dante's sleep and dream from the action on the fourth terrace, all the usual 'events' of any terrace are here condensed – in the compressed style appropriate to the description of the newly zealous – into these forty verses. All terraces include the following features in the same order: (1) description of the physical aspect of the terrace, (2) exemplars of the countering virtue, (3) description of the penitents, (4) recitation of their sins by particular penitents, (5) exemplars of the vice, (6) appearance to Dante of the angel representing the opposing virtue.
We might want to reflect on the extraordinary artisanship of the presentation of the exemplary material on the earlier terraces, things not matched by what we find in earlier medieval poems: the 'speaking' (and odoriferous) intaglios of Pride, the voices streaking overhead in Envy, the ecstatic visions of Wrath. It is as though Dante had used up all the brilliant new techniques of presentation of which he could think and now, for the rest of the ascent, subsides to the perfectly acceptable artistic level of utterance, leaving us to marvel at what he had done before. On three of the last four terraces the names (sometimes accompanied by reference to significant deeds) of all exemplary figures are simply called out by the penitents, while on the terrace of Gluttony, in a variant, the two trees do the talking.
Petrocchi's punctuation of this passage and of that devoted to the final exemplary figures, vv. 133-138, is probably not well conceived. Since there are two voices speaking, and since each pair of examples is divided by the copulative 'e' (and), it seems nearly certain that each voice recites a single example. Thus the 'e' in both passages should, alone, be outside quotation marks, thus marking each of the two statements as being registered by a different voice. Otherwise, what use was there in having two anonymous voices giving the examples? Scartazzini (comm. to verse 99) points out that the first two speakers, by virtue of leading the pack, are intrinsically the 'fastest' and thus most qualified to offer the positive exempla, while the last two, bringing up the rear, most appropriately give forth the negative ones. See also Pier Giorgio Ricci (”Il Canto XVIII del Purgatorio,“ in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1970]), pp. 260-63, discussing the paired voices and the problem with the punctuation adopted by Petrocchi.
Some of the earliest commentators believe that the reference is to the precipitous escape from Herod's decree and the flight of the holy family into Egypt (a misinterpretation that surfaced again in the Renaissance in the commentaries of Landino and Vellutello). However, beginning with Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to verse 100) the obvious citation of Luke 1:39 has been recognized as governing this example. Mary, having been told by Gabriel during the Annunciation of Elizabeth's miraculous pregnancy in her old age (which will result in the birth of John the Baptist), 'abiit in montana cum festinatione... et salutavit Elisabeth' (went with good speed into the hill country... and offered her salutation to Elizabeth).
The Roman example paired with Mary is none other than Julius Caesar. It is notable that in Lucan (Phars. III.453) Caesar's rushing off to do battle in Spain is not the result of military strategy but of his being bored (inpatiens) with the prolonged efforts to lay siege to Marseilles. Further, his eventual victory at Lerida is described by Lucan as being the result of fortunate changes in the weather (Phars. IV.48-49). Thus Dante's praise of him here is clearly at odds with Lucan's (always) withering scorn for the Great Man whom he so desperately despises. For the entire question of Dante's divided view of Julius Caesar, in one view the first, God-sent emperor of Rome, in another the destroyer of the Republic and of Roman virtue, see Stull and Hollander (”The Lucanian Source of Dante's Ulysses,“ Studi Danteschi 63 [1991 (1997)]), pp. 33-43. This is one of Julius's few positive moments in Dante's poem; and Dante needed to disregard Lucan's views in order to present him favorably. John of Serravalle's gloss (to vv. 97-102) might have pleased him: 'Cesar fuit recte inimicus accidie, fuit valde sollicitus. Semper dicebat militibus: Venite; nunquam dixit: Ite' (Caesar was indeed an enemy to sloth, a pronouncedly zealous one at that. He was always calling to his soldiers 'Come' and never once said 'Go'). For Dante's previous and next far less favorable references to Julius, see the notes to Purgatorio IX.133-138 and XXVI.76-78.
On every other terrace the penitents have a prayer that they speak in common when they are not interrupted by other forms of observance or by conversation with Dante and Virgil (see Purg. XI.1-24; XIII.50-51; XVI.19; XIX.73; XXIII.11; XXV.121). The terrace of Sloth offers the only exception, as though the previous acedia of these penitents took from them the privilege of Christian prayer. The gloss of Carroll (to vv. 103-105) is interesting: 'The idea seems... to be the danger of contemplation of good deeds, without an eager and immediate effort to imitate them. Mere ”study“ of them may end in the ”little love“ which produces sloth. It is only when ”study“ is accompanied by action that it ”makes grace bud again.'' For Dante, a man devoted to the pursuit of the morally engaged active life, certain occasions for prayer perhaps appeared to offer a potential escape from one's civil and religious duty in the world. Men and women of such disposition are thus, here in their penitence, denied the comfort of prayer until such time as prayer will be totally zealous, not the occasion for a moment of repose from worldly responsibility or, for that matter, from proper monastic exertion. Acedia was frequently associated with improper monastic otium, a withdrawal from the world but from one's duty to God, as well, surely a great temptation in the relative ease allowed by monastic life.'
The phrase 'per poco amor' (for lack of love) and the word 'studio' (the Italian equivalent of the Latin word for 'zeal') combine to underline the defining vice and virtue of this terrace.
Virgil's 'perhaps' is a gentle act of politesse on his part: these penitents were guilty of precisely what he describes.
The extreme courtesy of this speaker cancels whatever thoughts of villania (discourtesy) Dante or we might have. His identity – such as it is – will be revealed immediately.
San Zeno, just outside the city of Verona (and, by common consent, one of the most beautiful churches in Italy), was also the site of a monastery. Its nameless abbot, who speaks here, is generally identified as Gherardo II, who served, during the reign of the Emperor Frederick I, from 1163 until his death in 1187. Frederick Barbarossa, emperor (from 1152 until his death in 1190) as Frederick I, was a grandfather of Frederick II (emperor 1215-1250). Dante's overall opinion of him is difficult to measure, since he so rarely refers to him, but in the two passages that do invoke his presence, here and in Epistle VI.20, his destruction of Milan in 1162 for its anti-imperial activities is clearly applauded. On the question of Dante's views of Barbarossa see Bruno Nardi (“Dante e il buon Barbarossa,” L'Alighieri 7 [1966], pp. 3-27).
For the less than likely possibility that the adjective 'buon' (good) that precedes his name is here to be taken ironically, see Tommaseo's commentary to this passage. One may add that the thirty occasions in the Commedia on which a reader finds the epithet combined with a name or title (e.g., 'buon Marzucco,' 'buon maestro') do not reveal a single one in which an ironic reading seems warranted.
Dante, welcomed by the Scaligeri family to Verona in 1303-4, there enjoyed the first happy time of his exile. His memories of those rulers of the city give rise to a post-eventum prophecy. Alberto della Scala was lord of Verona until his death in 1301, by which time he had appointed his lame, illegitimate son, Giuseppe (1263-1313), to serve as abbot of the monastery (in 1292), for the rest of his days. Alberto was succeeded by his eldest legitimate son, Bartolommeo, nearly certainly Dante's first host in Verona. Upon Bartolommeo's death, in 1304, Alberto's second son, Alboino, became lord (many believe that Dante and Alboino did not get along, thus explaining Dante's departure from Verona ca. 1304), a position he held until his death in 1311, when he was succeeded by Cangrande della Scala, the third legitimate son and Dante's patron and host when the poet returned to Verona ca. 1314.
The nameless abbot is moving so quickly that Dante cannot tell whether he has finished speaking or has simply moved too far ahead to be heard while continuing to speak – a nice final touch to convey the zeal with which he is exercising his penitence.
For the reason that there are two anonymous speakers and for the probable punctuation of vv. 133-138, see the note to vv. 99-102.
The first example of the sin of Sloth indicates the Hebrews who, having made the passage through the Red Sea, grew restive under Moses' guidance and died of plague before the completed exodus across Jordan into the Promised Land accomplished only by Joshua and Caleb. See Numbers 14:1-38 and Deuteronomy 1:26-40.
Similarly, some of Aeneas's companions, egged on by Iris, disguised as the wife of Doryclus, rebelled against the leadership of Aeneas and chose to remain in Sicily. The matrons set fire to the ships and Aeneas, having saved all but four of them from destruction, allows all who wish to stay behind to do so (Aen. V.604-761). Giorgio Padoan (“Purgatorio Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), p. 686, argues that Dante's treatment of Aeneid V here differs from that found in Convivio IV.xxvi.11, but the difference can be explained by the fact that in the earlier passage Dante focuses on the willingness of Aeneas to allow the discouraged to stay behind found in Virgil's text itself, while here he judges the malingerers from a different vantage point, the divinely sanctioned imperative to found new Troy in Latium.
This discussion is part of a wider one (pp. 680-88), which returns to Padoan's earlier attempts to alert the reader to the question of which allegorical understanding of the Aeneid governs the reading of Virgil that is manifest in the Commedia. It is possible that, despite such earlier allegorical formulations of the meaning of Virgil's epic as are found in Convivio IV.xxvi.8-9 (or, for Lucan's epic, in Conv. IV.xxviii.13-19), Dante had turned his back on philological allegory as the key to anything central in the Aeneid, and read the poem historically, much as he wanted his own poem to be read. For this argument see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), pp. 78-94, citing D.L.M. Drew's previous arguments for a 'non-allegorical' Aeneid (p. 81n.).
The protagonist's novo pensiero (new thought) has puzzled his commentators. Is it one triggered by what he has seen and heard? Or is he anticipating the matters he will rehearse in his dream in the next canto? Or is the poet merely describing, generically, the way in which the mind works as it flits from subject to subject on the way to sleep (a view that is much present in the commentaries)? In the next canto, a similar phrase will refer to a mental image already experienced (the novella visïon of XIX.56) in his previous dream. Thus here it is at least possible that the 'new thought' is a response to what he has seen or heard. Could he have wondered whether he was himself more like the backsliding Hebrews and Trojans than he is like Joshua or Aeneas? This would seem possible, but not demonstrable. In any case, this unreported thought leads to still others, and these are clearly – because the text tells us so – the matter of his dream.
The verb Dante uses to describe his floating state of consciousness, vaneggiai (rambled), picks up an earlier phrasing, when he compares himself to one who sonnolento vana (rambles in his drowsy mind – verse 87) after Virgil has finished his explanation of love and free will. There he is falling into a fatigue that mirrors the sin purged on this terrace. Here he finally gives in to that weight of somnolence.
Dante's purgatorial dreams are described in cantos IX, XIX, and XXVII, but the second occurs here, in a single line, 'e 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai' (and I transformed my musings into dream). Since in Vita nuova he presents his age as having been nine, eighteen, and twenty-seven for his three main 'encounters' with Beatrice, the poet perhaps wanted to retain those three nine-based and nine-spaced numbers for his three dreams that lead back to her now. For this calculation see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), p. 145.
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Posto avea fine al suo ragionamento
l'alto dottore, e attento guardava
ne la mia vista s'io parea contento;
e io, cui nova sete ancor frugava,
di fuor tacea, e dentro dicea: “Forse
lo troppo dimandar ch'io fo li grava.”
Ma quel padre verace, che s'accorse
del timido voler che non s'apriva,
parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse.
Ond'io: “Maestro, il mio veder s'avviva
sì nel tuo lume, ch'io discerno chiaro
quanto la tua ragion parta o descriva.
Però ti prego, dolce padre caro,
che mi dimostri amore, a cui reduci
ogne buono operare e 'l suo contraro.”
“Drizza,” disse, “ver' me l'agute luci
de lo 'ntelletto, e fieti manifesto
l'error de' ciechi che si fanno duci.
L'animo, ch'è creato ad amar presto,
ad ogne cosa è mobile che piace,
tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto.
Vostra apprensiva da esser verace
tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega,
sì che l'animo ad essa volger face;
e se, rivolto, inver' di lei si piega,
quel piegare è amor, quell' è natura
che per piacer di novo in voi si lega.
Poi, come 'l foco movesi in altura
per la sua forma ch'è nata a salire
là dove più in sua matera dura,
così l'animo preso entra in disire,
ch'è moto spiritale, e mai non posa
fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire.
Or ti puote apparer quant' è nascosa
la veritate a la gente ch'avvera
ciascun amore in sé laudabil cosa;
però che forse appar la sua matera
sempre esser buona, ma non ciascun segno
è buono, ancor che buona sia la cera.”
“Le tue parole e 'l mio seguace ingegno,”
rispuos' io lui, “m'hanno amor discoverto,
ma ciò m'ha fatto di dubbiar più pregno;
ché, s'amore è di fuori a noi offerto
e l'anima non va con altro piede,
se dritta o torta va, non è suo merto.”
Ed elli a me: “Quanto ragion qui vede,
dir ti poss' io; da indi in là t'aspetta
pur a Beatrice, ch'è opra di fede.
Ogne forma sustanzïal, che setta
è da matera ed è con lei unita,
specifica vertute ha in sé colletta,
la qual sanza operar non è sentita,
né si dimostra mai che per effetto,
come per verdi fronde in pianta vita.
Però, là onde vegna lo 'ntelletto
de le prime notizie, omo non sape,
e de' primi appetibili l'affetto,
che sono in voi sì come studio in ape
di far lo mele; e questa prima voglia
merto di lode o di biasmo non cape.
Or perché a questa ogn' altra si raccoglia
innata v'è la virtù che consiglia,
e de l'assenso de' tener la soglia.
Quest' è 'l principio là onde si piglia
ragion di meritare in voi, secondo
che buoni e rei amori accoglie e viglia.
Color che ragionando andaro al fondo,
s'accorser d'esta innata libertate;
però moralità lasciaro al mondo.
Onde, poniam che di necessitate
surga ogne amor che dentro a voi s'accende,
di ritenerlo è in voi la podestate.
La nobile virtù Beatrice intende
per lo libero arbitrio, e però guarda
che l'abbi a mente, s'a parlar ten prende.”
La luna, quasi a mezza notte tarda,
facea le stelle a noi parer più rade,
fatta com' un secchion che tuttor arda;
e correa contra 'l ciel per quelle strade
che 'l sole infiamma allor che quel da Roma
tra ' Sardi e ' Corsi il vede quando cade.
E quell' ombra gentil per cui si noma
Pietola più che villa mantoana,
del mio carcar diposta avea la soma;
per ch'io, che la ragione aperta e piana
sovra le mie quistioni avea ricolta,
stava com' om che sonnolento vana.
Ma questa sonnolenza mi fu tolta
subitamente da gente che dopo
le nostre spalle a noi era già volta.
E quale Ismeno già vide e Asopo
lungo di sé di notte furia e calca,
pur che i Teban di Bacco avesser uopo,
cotal per quel giron suo passo falca,
per quel ch'io vidi di color, venendo,
cui buon volere e giusto amor cavalca.
Tosto fur sovr' a noi, perché correndo
si movea tutta quella turba magna;
e due dinanzi gridavan piangendo:
“Maria corse con fretta a la montagna;
e Cesare, per soggiogare Ilerda,
punse Marsilia e poi corse in Ispagna.”
“Ratto, ratto, che 'l tempo non si perda
per poco amor,” gridavan li altri appresso,
“che studio di ben far grazia rinverda.”
“O gente in cui fervore aguto adesso
ricompie forse negligenza e indugio
da voi per tepidezza in ben far messo,
questi che vive, e certo i' non vi bugio,
vuole andar sù, pur che 'l sol ne riluca;
però ne dite ond' è presso il pertugio.”
Parole furon queste del mio duca;
e un di quelli spirti disse: “Vieni
di retro a noi, e troverai la buca.
Noi siam di voglia a muoverci sì pieni,
che restar non potem; però perdona,
se villania nostra giustizia tieni.
Io fui abate in San Zeno a Verona
sotto lo 'mperio del buon Barbarossa,
di cui dolente ancor Milan ragiona.
E tale ha già l'un piè dentro la fossa,
che tosto piangerà quel monastero,
e tristo fia d'avere avuta possa;
perché suo figlio, mal del corpo intero,
e de la mente peggio, e che mal nacque,
ha posto in loco di suo pastor vero.”
Io non so se più disse o s'ei si tacque,
tant' era già di là da noi trascorso;
ma questo intesi, e ritener mi piacque.
E quei che m'era ad ogne uopo soccorso
disse: “Volgiti qua: vedine due
venir dando a l'accidïa di morso.”
Di retro a tutti dicean: “Prima fue
morta la gente a cui il mar s'aperse,
che vedesse Iordan le rede sue.
E quella che l'affanno non sofferse
fino a la fine col figlio d'Anchise
sé stessa a vita sanza gloria offerse.”
Poi quando fuor da noi tanto divise
quell' ombre, che veder più non potiersi,
novo pensiero dentro a me si mise,
del qual più altri nacquero e diversi;
e tanto d'uno in altro vaneggiai,
che li occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,
e 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai.
An end had put unto his reasoning
The lofty Teacher, and attent was looking
Into my face, if I appeared content;
And I, whom a new thirst still goaded on,
Without was mute, and said within: "Perchance
The too much questioning I make annoys him."
But that true Father, who had comprehended
The timid wish, that opened not itself,
By speaking gave me hardihood to speak.
Whence I: "My sight is, Master, vivified
So in thy light, that clearly I discern
Whate'er thy speech importeth or describes.
Therefore I thee entreat, sweet Father dear,
To teach me love, to which thou dost refer
Every good action and its contrary."
"Direct," he said, "towards me the keen eyes
Of intellect, and clear will be to thee
The error of the blind, who would be leaders.
The soul, which is created apt to love,
Is mobile unto everything that pleases,
Soon as by pleasure she is waked to action.
Your apprehension from some real thing
An image draws, and in yourselves displays it
So that it makes the soul turn unto it.
And if, when turned, towards it she incline,
Love is that inclination; it is nature,
Which is by pleasure bound in you anew
Then even as the fire doth upward move
By its own form, which to ascend is born,
Where longest in its matter it endures,
So comes the captive soul into desire,
Which is a motion spiritual, and ne'er rests
Until she doth enjoy the thing beloved.
Now may apparent be to thee how hidden
The truth is from those people, who aver
All love is in itself a laudable thing;
Because its matter may perchance appear
Aye to be good; but yet not each impression
Is good, albeit good may be the wax."
"Thy words, and my sequacious intellect,"
I answered him, "have love revealed to me;
But that has made me more impregned with doubt;
For if love from without be offered us,
And with another foot the soul go not,
If right or wrong she go, 'tis not her merit."
And he to me: "What reason seeth here,
Myself can tell thee; beyond that await
For Beatrice, since 'tis a work of faith.
Every substantial form, that segregate
From matter is, and with it is united,
Specific power has in itself collected,
Which without act is not perceptible,
Nor shows itself except by its effect,
As life does in a plant by the green leaves.
But still, whence cometh the intelligence
Of the first notions, man is ignorant,
And the affection for the first allurements,
Which are in you as instinct in the bee
To make its honey; and this first desire
Merit of praise or blame containeth not.
Now, that to this all others may be gathered,
Innate within you is the power that counsels,
And it should keep the threshold of assent.
This is the principle, from which is taken
Occasion of desert in you, according
As good and guilty loves it takes and winnows.
Those who, in reasoning, to the bottom went,
Were of this innate liberty aware,
Therefore bequeathed they Ethics to the world.
Supposing, then, that from necessity
Springs every love that is within you kindled,
Within yourselves the power is to restrain it.
The noble virtue Beatrice understands
By the free will; and therefore see that thou
Bear it in mind, if she should speak of it."
The moon, belated almost unto midnight,
Now made the stars appear to us more rare,
Formed like a bucket, that is all ablaze,
And counter to the heavens ran through those paths
Which the sun sets aflame, when he of Rome
Sees it 'twixt Sardes and Corsicans go down;
And that patrician shade, for whom is named
Pietola more than any Mantuan town,
Had laid aside the burden of my lading;
Whence I, who reason manifest and plain
In answer to my questions had received,
Stood like a man in drowsy reverie.
But taken from me was this drowsiness
Suddenly by a people, that behind
Our backs already had come round to us.
And as, of old, Ismenus and Asopus
Beside them saw at night the rush and throng,
If but the Thebans were in need of Bacchus,
So they along that circle curve their step,
From what I saw of those approaching us,
Who by good-will and righteous love are ridden.
Full soon they were upon us, because running
Moved onward all that mighty multitude,
And two in the advance cried out, lamenting,
"Mary in haste unto the mountain ran,
And Caesar, that he might subdue Ilerda,
Thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain."
"Quick! quick! so that the time may not be lost
By little love!" forthwith the others cried,
"For ardour in well-doing freshens grace!"
"O folk, in whom an eager fervour now
Supplies perhaps delay and negligence,
Put by you in well-doing, through lukewarmness,
This one who lives, and truly I lie not,
Would fain go up, if but the sun relight us;
So tell us where the passage nearest is."
These were the words of him who was my Guide;
And some one of those spirits said: "Come on
Behind us, and the opening shalt thou find;
So full of longing are we to move onward,
That stay we cannot; therefore pardon us,
If thou for churlishness our justice take.
I was San Zeno's Abbot at Verona,
Under the empire of good Barbarossa,
Of whom still sorrowing Milan holds discourse;
And he has one foot in the grave already,
Who shall erelong lament that monastery,
And sorry be of having there had power,
Because his son, in his whole body sick,
And worse in mind, and who was evil-born,
He put into the place of its true pastor."
If more he said, or silent was, I know not,
He had already passed so far beyond us;
But this I heard, and to retain it pleased me.
And he who was in every need my succour
Said: "Turn thee hitherward; see two of them
Come fastening upon slothfulness their teeth."
In rear of all they shouted: "Sooner were
The people dead to whom the sea was opened,
Than their inheritors the Jordan saw;
And those who the fatigue did not endure
Unto the issue, with Anchises' son,
Themselves to life withouten glory offered."
Then when from us so separated were
Those shades, that they no longer could be seen,
Within me a new thought did entrance find,
Whence others many and diverse were born;
And so I lapsed from one into another,
That in a reverie mine eyes I closed,
And meditation into dream transmuted.
This canto continues the flow of the last with no demarcation in the text itself of a terminus or of a new beginning. As Bosco points out in his introductory note to the two cantos, they form a unit developed on a chiastic pattern:
XVII.1-69 (narrative)
XVII.70-139 (instruction)
XVIII.1-75 (instruction)
XVIII.76-145 (narrative)
Further, these two cantos form a larger unit with Purgatorio XVI, which is similarly divided into two large blocks of material: 1-63 (narrative) and 64-145 (Marco's instruction). In this way the numerical center of the Commedia, cantos 49-51, is made more noticeable. (For the midpoint with respect to the number of lines in the poem, see the note to Purg. XVII.118-119.)
Pier Giorgio Ricci (“Il Canto XVIII del Purgatorio,” in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1970]), p. 252, suggests that Dante spreads Virgil's full canto's worth (145 verses) of speechifying over two cantos so as not to strain the reader's patience.
Virgil's 'Scholastic' credentials seem strong. See Giuseppe Tarozzi's appreciation (Il canto XVIII del “Purgatorio” [“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”] [Florence: Sansoni, 1901]), p. 7: Virgil 'here represents the idealized figure of the medieval docent.' A close analysis of his discourse in the preceding canto, such as may be found, in English, in Singleton's commentary, reveals a line of argument that is closely based on Thomistic texts. In keeping with such discourse and for the first time since Inferno XVI.48, Virgil is saluted by his pupil as 'professor' (dottore). For the other terms used to describe Virgil's role as guide in the poem, see the note to Inferno II.140. (Virgil is referred to as dottore elsewhere as follows: Inf. V.70, Inf. V.123, Inf. XVI.13, Inf. XVI.48, Purg. XXI.22, Purg. XXI.131, Purg. XXIV.14).
In fact, Virgil has rarely been referred to or addressed by Dante with such fervent admiration as here and shortly later in this canto, when he will be 'padre verace' (true father – 7), 'Maestro' (Master – 10), and then 'father' again (13). See the note to vv. 17-18.
In this and the next canto the protagonist's forward movement in understanding is underlined by the adjective nuovo (new): used here for his new 'thirst,' at verse 141 for his 'new thought' in reaction to the departure of the penitents in Sloth, and at Purg. XIX.56, in his reference to the new dream he has just had on this terrace.
Dante's 'timid wish' should probably be considered related to intellectual sloth (see Purg. XVII.130, lento amore [laggard love]). How could Dante have considered himself 'timid' in seeking the truth? Had he involved himself in a less than urgent affection for the good, the charge would seem appropriate. Since it is the author who makes the charge, it might seem that he himself believed that he did not always display the zeal necessary for loving well.
Why, one might ask, after Virgil's long speech in the last canto, should Dante want Virgil to 'expound' love when he seems just now to have finished (with suitable fanfare) doing precisely that? What the protagonist means is 'expatiate upon,' 'explain more precisely,' the argument just now presented. The word dimostrare is here, in fact, a verb based on the Latin noun demonstratio, as used to refer to the development of proofs by means of syllogistic demonstration. See Paradiso XXIV.96.
Virgil's words reflect Matthew 15:14, where Jesus says that the Pharisees are blind guides of the blind who follow them, adding that guide and flock shall all end up falling into a ditch.
In Convivio I.xi.4 Dante cites this passage, directing its barb against 'those wicked Italians who praise the vernacular of others while disparaging their own' (Conv. I.xi.1) and who are therefore likewise headed toward disaster. As Francesco Mazzoni argues (“Latini, Brunetto” [ED.1971.3], p. 580b), in this connection it is difficult not to think of Dante's fellow Florentine Brunetto Latini, who wrote his encyclopedic Tresor in French rather than in his native vernacular (see André Pézard [Dante sous la pluie de feu (Paris: Vrin, 1950)] for extensive development of this idea). Also to be considered are the words, written shortly before or shortly after this passage (on the problems of dating Dve and Conv. see Hollander [Dante: A Life in Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)], pp. 54-55), in De vulgari eloquentia I.xiii.1, when Dante 'exiles' Brunetto from the illustrious and courtly vernacular that he is championing, relegating him to the ash heap of the municipal vernacular, the 'street talk' that is to be avoided by serious poets. In what seems to have been a change of heart, Brunetto, in the fifteenth canto of Inferno, will be treated generously as Dante's vernacular 'teacher' (Inf. XV.85), just as Virgil was his first Latin guide. It seems clear that these two are joined only by Guido Guinizzelli as explicitly paternal figures of writerly authority for the Tuscan poet.
Dante refers to, whether as protagonist or as poet, various 'fathers' in the course of the poem (this is to exclude 'fathers' addressed by other characters). Of those listed below, those numbered 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 are only addressed or referred to once; all the others have at least two other paternal moments for Dante, except for St. Bernard, who has only one other; Virgil leads all 'fathers' with a dozen other occurrences. Of these twelve 'fathers,' seven are addressed, those numbered 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12. The parenthetic reference is to the first appearance of each 'father.'
(1) Virgil (Inf. VIII.110)
(2) Brunetto Latini (Inf. XV.83)
(3) Cato of Utica (Purg. I.33)
(4) Guido Guinizzelli (Purg. XXVI.97)
(5) God (addressed as 'good Apollo,' Par. I.28)
(6) St. Francis (Par. XI.85)
(7) Cacciaguida (Par. XVI.16)
(8) St. Benedict (Par. XXII.58)
(9) the sun (Par. XXII.116)
(10) St. Peter (Par. XXIV.62)
(11) Adam (Par. XXVI.92)
(12) St. Bernard (Par. XXXI.63)
Frank Ordiway's lengthy article, “Brunetto and Dante,” completed in draft ca. 1992 but still under revision, offers detailed analysis of the program of Dante's 'fathers' in the poem. See, for his first treatment of this material, his doctoral dissertation (Dante, Chaucer, and the Poetics of the Past [unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1990]).
Virgil, responding to Dante's request, carries his analysis of the loving human mind to the next level, the role of the rational soul in determining human choice and, therefore, action. This tercet establishes the subject of Virgil's difficult clarification (vv. 22-39): how mind (the rational soul, created directly by God and instilled in the embryo last [see Purg. XXV.67-75]) reacts appetitively to external things.
The apprensiva (power of perception), already implicitly referred to in Dante's apostrophe of the imaginativa (faculty of imagination) in Purgatorio XVII.13-15, is the faculty of perception that reacts to the capturing of an image (referred to here as an intenzione) of external reality in the imaginazione or fantasia (see the note to verse 13-18). The mind, as opposed to the 'natural desire' of the senses (see Purg. XVII.93 for this distinction), which is always errorless, is responsible for its choices and may err. If its perception inclines toward what it contemplates, that is what we call love.
For a discussion of this passage in light of the Aristotelian and Arabic roots of Dante's word intenzione, see the entry for that term by Tullio Gregory (ED.1971.3), pp. 480b-481b.
Desire, love in action, now continues by extending toward its goal and remaining in this state as long as it takes pleasure in its appetition. (For fire as an example of 'natural desire,' see the note to Purg. XVII.91-92.) Thus here Dante is comparing intellectual desire to natural desire, but also insisting on the distance between them. Natural desire can never be culpable (e.g., fire always 'desires' to rise – that is its natural inclination). There is perhaps no moment in the poem of greater danger to its essential philosophical position. Is human desire – for money, food, or sexual pleasure – not as 'natural' as this? Does anyone not desire these things? Dante's attempt to persuade us, as he may well have realized, reflects that of another dottore and maestro, Jesus. He, as the Gospels amply testify, also spoke frequently, in his parables, in terms of human desires that all could understand, e.g., of money, agriculture, marriage. In all cases the listener is encouraged, even impelled, to understand that such pleasures, as great as they may be, will seem as nothing compared to the joys of Heaven.
Padoan (“Purgatorio Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), pp. 668-70, suggests that Dante's definition of love in this canto intrinsically corrects Francesca's claims for the ineluctable nature of passionate love (Inf. V.103).
Dante was surely right to let his language here reflect an essentially sexual view of love. Consider the last verse of this part of the passage, 'fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire' (as long as it enjoys the thing it loves [for this understanding of the conjunction fin che see Francesco Mazzoni, cited by Bosco/Reggio in their commentary on this passage; in opposition, reading 'until it attains the thing it loves' as being more Thomistic, see Alfred A. Triolo (Purgatorio XVIII,“ in Dante's ”Divine Comedy,“ Introductory Readings II: ”Purgatorio,“ ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis (virginiana), 12, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1993]), p. 268]). Arriving at this point in the argument, a reader would have to be pardoned for believing that whatever good the spirit of love pursues is ipso facto good, just as the protagonist himself will shortly seem to believe (vv. 43-45). But what is the nature of the 'moto spiritale' (movement of the spirit) of the 'captive mind'? That question is reflected in the crucial and concluding portion of Virgil's discourse.
The main candidates for this unenviable denomination, the errant folk who believe that all love is good (a proposition, as we have seen, that we might have considered unassailable a moment ago), have been Epicureans. In the modern period this view is first offered by Scartazzini (comm. to verse 35) but then is held by many twentieth-century commentators. Grabher (comm. to vv. 19-39) is of the opinion that this is the position of all love poets, including the younger Dante. His view, sometimes combined with that of Scartazzini, has grown increasingly attractive to recent commentators. Clearly, anyone who believes that love is in itself and always praiseworthy is among this group.
The 'imprint' on the 'wax' of our love becomes the crucial symbolic expression of the concept developed here. The 'wax' clearly refers to the innate human potential to love, which is 'stamped' by the image that the mind has extracted from reality; that 'stamp' may either be worthy or unworthy, while the 'wax' is always worthy.
It is, despite Virgil's last insistence on the (implicit) need for the proper exercise of the free will in choosing the objects of one's desire, understandable that Dante, up to this point, believes that the mind is completely responsive to internalized (by the apprensiva) external stimuli (the intenzione – see verse 23), and thus irreprehensible in whatever choice it makes.
This passage offers perhaps the only apparently material evidence in the poem that would tie both Virgil and Beatrice to an allegorical status, his role being that of Reason, hers, Faith. But see Hollander (”Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,“ Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990]), p. 42, n. 2: 'It is from Virgil's lips that we first hear the name Beatrice... in Purgatorio: VI.46; XV.77; XVIII.48. In her first three nominal presences in this cantica... she is associated first with hope (VI.32), then with love (XV.68; XV.71; XV,74), then with faith.' Thus associated with the three theological virtues, Beatrice can be seen as possessing all of them; she probably should not be seen as representing any one of them, or as having an 'allegorical' status in this poem.
In keeping with all of the ratiocination found in this canto, words for 'reason' in various noun and verb forms are found in it far more than in any other (Purg. XXII finishes a distant second with four occurrences), as follows: vv. 1, 12, 46, 65, 67, 85, 120.
The three cantos at the center of Purgatorio devote what may seem immoderate space to what Benedetto Croce disliked in Dante, his 'non-poesia,' his 'structure,' his mere allotria (the 'extraneous matter' of philosophy or theology that Croce deprecated in Dante; opposing such views, Fernando Salsano [”Purgatorio Canto XV,“ in Lectura Dantis Scaligera (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967)], p. 542, speaks of the Comedy as 'un poema e non un libro di poesie'). For an examination of what Croce's kind of aestheticizing denies to Dante's poem, precisely the validity and beauty of its conceptual structure, see Giorgio Stabile (”Cosmologia e teologia nella Commedia: la caduta di Lucifero e il rovesciamento del mondo,“ Letture classensi 12 [1983]), pp. 139-44. Stabile is surely correct in arguing that Croce's oppositional binome structure/poetry fails to account for the aesthetic possibilities of Dante's versified conceptual thinking. Marco's long speech in XVI (65-129), Virgil's in XVII (91-139), and Virgil's concluding two in this canto (16-39; 49-75) should be looked upon, as should the related discursive portions of Cantos XXIV and XXV, as part of a continuing development of a complex statement about the nature and function of love, presented from different vantage points. In Canto XXIV, Dante's presentation of the Holy Spirit's creative role in helping to make the writings of a handful of poets acceptable to God prepares for the following treatment in Canto XXV of the way the Holy Spirit is breathed into all of us, thus explaining how eventually a very few of us may become acceptable to God as His saints in paradise. In these three cantos Marco the Lombard explains the need for proper civil governance because our free will may elsewise lead us astray, while Virgil takes up a related topic, the need for us individually to use our free will correctly in choosing and responding to the objects of our attention and affection.
The only 'substantial form' to be both distinct from matter and joined to it is the human soul, which is formed by pure divine intellect (as are the angels) and by emotional and vegetative powers (as are the beasts). Its specifica vertute (defining disposition), as we learn at vv. 55-57, is composed of primal intellect and primal will, and is only perceptible in the action of the soul, not in itself. Now, leaving intellection out of consideration, Virgil continues: We have no recollection or current understanding of our original inclination (to love God), yet we do demonstrate its presence in us, as the eagerness of bees for making honey reveals their 'defining disposition.' This kind of (natural) will exists beyond and before moral assent.
This innate will (see Purg. XXI.105, la virtù che vuole [the power that wills]) must accord with la virtù che consiglia ('the faculty that counsels'), the higher intellect that should govern all our choices; our ability to choose good and to discard wrongful affections is the ground for the measurement of our moral condition.
Aristotle's Ethics is probably Dante's main source for his views on morality (a view supported by Benvenuto da Imola [comm. to vv. 67-75]). However, to account for the plurality of the reference, Poletto (comm. to these verses) sensibly refers to Dante's own earlier phrasing (found in the words of his guide, Virgil), 'I speak of Aristotle and of Plato / and of many others' (Purg. III.43-44).
Virgil's lengthy discourse concludes with his final insistence on the pivotal role of free will in individual moral responsibility and looks forward (as Benvenuto was perhaps the first to realize [see his comm. to vv. 67-75]) to Beatrice's remarks on the subject in Paradiso V.19-24, asseverating that the freedom of the will is the greatest of God's gifts to humankind. Many of the early commentators find this a convenient place for them to reassert the 'allegorical' valence of Beatrice, here interpreted as 'Theology.' In the past 150 years most commentators are content to leave the allegorical equation in abeyance, merely referring to Beatrice as herself.
Returning to narrative, the poet returns to telling the time. The moon, as the slowest 'planet' in Dante's astronomy, is fittingly the celestial body referred to on the terrace of Sloth. Its appearance is compared by Benvenuto (comm. to these lines) to the semicircular fire in a lighthouse, glowing throughout the night. Commentators are divided as to exactly what is involved here, i.e., whether it is the moon's rising that is referred to or its current position in the sky. Singleton's discussion (comm. to vv. 76-78) resuscitates Edward Moore's early essay (The Time References in the ”Divina Commedia“ [London 1887]) to support the notion that there is no reference here to moonrise (the cause of endless resultant debate in the commentaries about the precise hour that would then be indicated), but to the moon being high enough in the sky to dim the brightness of the stars at the approach of midnight.
The moon, Dante would seem to be saying, was roughly on the same path taken by the sun when it sets in the southwest (when seen from Rome) in late November, between Sardinia and Corsica.
The protagonist's gratitude to Virgil is expressed with a salute to his birthplace, Pietola ('Andes' in Roman times). Some early commentators read the phrase 'più che villa mantoana' to mean 'more than the city Mantua,' while the meaning is nearly certainly 'more than any Mantuan town,' i.e., any other town in the vicinity of the city, not Mantua itself, as Padoan (”Purgatorio Canto XVIII,“ in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), p. 688n., agrees.
Again a detail – Dante's somnolence – establishes a connection with Sloth.
These penitents, as opposed to the wrathful, move in the same counterclockwise direction that is followed by Dante and Virgil. It would seem that, while the movement of Dante to the right is morally determined, that of the penitents is not, is rather the result of aesthetic considerations. Review of the various groups that are in motion suggests that such is the case. Below the gate, we see that the excommunicate are moving rightwards (Purg. III.59), while the late-repentant seem to be heading to the left (Purg. V.23). On the terraces, the prideful seem to be moving right (Purg. X.100), while the wrathful are headed left (Purg. XV.142). Here in Sloth the penitents come from behind Virgil and Dante but are moving in the same direction (Purg. XVIII.90). Farther up the mountain the penitent gluttons are also moving counterclockwise (Purg. XXIII.19-20), while the two distinct bands of the lustful proceed in two different directions (Purg. XXVI.29).
This is a fairly rare occurrence in Purgatorio, a simile based explicitly on classical materials (but see Purg. IX.34-42, for the similetic reference to Statius's Achilles). And there will not be another (now based on a passage in Lucan) until Purgatorio XXIV.64-69.
Ismenus and Asopus are names of rivers, the first flowing through the city of Thebes, the second near it. Beginning with Jacopo della Lana (comm. to these verses), commentators have offered the opinion, from time to time, that Dante's source here is Statius (Thebaid IX). Ismenos is named at IX.404, his 'brother' Asopos at IX.449. That passage includes two references to the orgiastic Bacchic rites (IX.434-436; 478-480) to which Dante here refers.
Running in a group to counteract the painful memory of their solitary slothful behaviors on earth, all these gathered penitents may put contemporary readers in mind of the massed crowds of runners in metropolitan marathons.
With the exception of the concluding interaction with the angel in the following canto, separated by Dante's sleep and dream from the action on the fourth terrace, all the usual 'events' of any terrace are here condensed – in the compressed style appropriate to the description of the newly zealous – into these forty verses. All terraces include the following features in the same order: (1) description of the physical aspect of the terrace, (2) exemplars of the countering virtue, (3) description of the penitents, (4) recitation of their sins by particular penitents, (5) exemplars of the vice, (6) appearance to Dante of the angel representing the opposing virtue.
We might want to reflect on the extraordinary artisanship of the presentation of the exemplary material on the earlier terraces, things not matched by what we find in earlier medieval poems: the 'speaking' (and odoriferous) intaglios of Pride, the voices streaking overhead in Envy, the ecstatic visions of Wrath. It is as though Dante had used up all the brilliant new techniques of presentation of which he could think and now, for the rest of the ascent, subsides to the perfectly acceptable artistic level of utterance, leaving us to marvel at what he had done before. On three of the last four terraces the names (sometimes accompanied by reference to significant deeds) of all exemplary figures are simply called out by the penitents, while on the terrace of Gluttony, in a variant, the two trees do the talking.
Petrocchi's punctuation of this passage and of that devoted to the final exemplary figures, vv. 133-138, is probably not well conceived. Since there are two voices speaking, and since each pair of examples is divided by the copulative 'e' (and), it seems nearly certain that each voice recites a single example. Thus the 'e' in both passages should, alone, be outside quotation marks, thus marking each of the two statements as being registered by a different voice. Otherwise, what use was there in having two anonymous voices giving the examples? Scartazzini (comm. to verse 99) points out that the first two speakers, by virtue of leading the pack, are intrinsically the 'fastest' and thus most qualified to offer the positive exempla, while the last two, bringing up the rear, most appropriately give forth the negative ones. See also Pier Giorgio Ricci (”Il Canto XVIII del Purgatorio,“ in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1970]), pp. 260-63, discussing the paired voices and the problem with the punctuation adopted by Petrocchi.
Some of the earliest commentators believe that the reference is to the precipitous escape from Herod's decree and the flight of the holy family into Egypt (a misinterpretation that surfaced again in the Renaissance in the commentaries of Landino and Vellutello). However, beginning with Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to verse 100) the obvious citation of Luke 1:39 has been recognized as governing this example. Mary, having been told by Gabriel during the Annunciation of Elizabeth's miraculous pregnancy in her old age (which will result in the birth of John the Baptist), 'abiit in montana cum festinatione... et salutavit Elisabeth' (went with good speed into the hill country... and offered her salutation to Elizabeth).
The Roman example paired with Mary is none other than Julius Caesar. It is notable that in Lucan (Phars. III.453) Caesar's rushing off to do battle in Spain is not the result of military strategy but of his being bored (inpatiens) with the prolonged efforts to lay siege to Marseilles. Further, his eventual victory at Lerida is described by Lucan as being the result of fortunate changes in the weather (Phars. IV.48-49). Thus Dante's praise of him here is clearly at odds with Lucan's (always) withering scorn for the Great Man whom he so desperately despises. For the entire question of Dante's divided view of Julius Caesar, in one view the first, God-sent emperor of Rome, in another the destroyer of the Republic and of Roman virtue, see Stull and Hollander (”The Lucanian Source of Dante's Ulysses,“ Studi Danteschi 63 [1991 (1997)]), pp. 33-43. This is one of Julius's few positive moments in Dante's poem; and Dante needed to disregard Lucan's views in order to present him favorably. John of Serravalle's gloss (to vv. 97-102) might have pleased him: 'Cesar fuit recte inimicus accidie, fuit valde sollicitus. Semper dicebat militibus: Venite; nunquam dixit: Ite' (Caesar was indeed an enemy to sloth, a pronouncedly zealous one at that. He was always calling to his soldiers 'Come' and never once said 'Go'). For Dante's previous and next far less favorable references to Julius, see the notes to Purgatorio IX.133-138 and XXVI.76-78.
On every other terrace the penitents have a prayer that they speak in common when they are not interrupted by other forms of observance or by conversation with Dante and Virgil (see Purg. XI.1-24; XIII.50-51; XVI.19; XIX.73; XXIII.11; XXV.121). The terrace of Sloth offers the only exception, as though the previous acedia of these penitents took from them the privilege of Christian prayer. The gloss of Carroll (to vv. 103-105) is interesting: 'The idea seems... to be the danger of contemplation of good deeds, without an eager and immediate effort to imitate them. Mere ”study“ of them may end in the ”little love“ which produces sloth. It is only when ”study“ is accompanied by action that it ”makes grace bud again.'' For Dante, a man devoted to the pursuit of the morally engaged active life, certain occasions for prayer perhaps appeared to offer a potential escape from one's civil and religious duty in the world. Men and women of such disposition are thus, here in their penitence, denied the comfort of prayer until such time as prayer will be totally zealous, not the occasion for a moment of repose from worldly responsibility or, for that matter, from proper monastic exertion. Acedia was frequently associated with improper monastic otium, a withdrawal from the world but from one's duty to God, as well, surely a great temptation in the relative ease allowed by monastic life.'
The phrase 'per poco amor' (for lack of love) and the word 'studio' (the Italian equivalent of the Latin word for 'zeal') combine to underline the defining vice and virtue of this terrace.
Virgil's 'perhaps' is a gentle act of politesse on his part: these penitents were guilty of precisely what he describes.
The extreme courtesy of this speaker cancels whatever thoughts of villania (discourtesy) Dante or we might have. His identity – such as it is – will be revealed immediately.
San Zeno, just outside the city of Verona (and, by common consent, one of the most beautiful churches in Italy), was also the site of a monastery. Its nameless abbot, who speaks here, is generally identified as Gherardo II, who served, during the reign of the Emperor Frederick I, from 1163 until his death in 1187. Frederick Barbarossa, emperor (from 1152 until his death in 1190) as Frederick I, was a grandfather of Frederick II (emperor 1215-1250). Dante's overall opinion of him is difficult to measure, since he so rarely refers to him, but in the two passages that do invoke his presence, here and in Epistle VI.20, his destruction of Milan in 1162 for its anti-imperial activities is clearly applauded. On the question of Dante's views of Barbarossa see Bruno Nardi (“Dante e il buon Barbarossa,” L'Alighieri 7 [1966], pp. 3-27).
For the less than likely possibility that the adjective 'buon' (good) that precedes his name is here to be taken ironically, see Tommaseo's commentary to this passage. One may add that the thirty occasions in the Commedia on which a reader finds the epithet combined with a name or title (e.g., 'buon Marzucco,' 'buon maestro') do not reveal a single one in which an ironic reading seems warranted.
Dante, welcomed by the Scaligeri family to Verona in 1303-4, there enjoyed the first happy time of his exile. His memories of those rulers of the city give rise to a post-eventum prophecy. Alberto della Scala was lord of Verona until his death in 1301, by which time he had appointed his lame, illegitimate son, Giuseppe (1263-1313), to serve as abbot of the monastery (in 1292), for the rest of his days. Alberto was succeeded by his eldest legitimate son, Bartolommeo, nearly certainly Dante's first host in Verona. Upon Bartolommeo's death, in 1304, Alberto's second son, Alboino, became lord (many believe that Dante and Alboino did not get along, thus explaining Dante's departure from Verona ca. 1304), a position he held until his death in 1311, when he was succeeded by Cangrande della Scala, the third legitimate son and Dante's patron and host when the poet returned to Verona ca. 1314.
The nameless abbot is moving so quickly that Dante cannot tell whether he has finished speaking or has simply moved too far ahead to be heard while continuing to speak – a nice final touch to convey the zeal with which he is exercising his penitence.
For the reason that there are two anonymous speakers and for the probable punctuation of vv. 133-138, see the note to vv. 99-102.
The first example of the sin of Sloth indicates the Hebrews who, having made the passage through the Red Sea, grew restive under Moses' guidance and died of plague before the completed exodus across Jordan into the Promised Land accomplished only by Joshua and Caleb. See Numbers 14:1-38 and Deuteronomy 1:26-40.
Similarly, some of Aeneas's companions, egged on by Iris, disguised as the wife of Doryclus, rebelled against the leadership of Aeneas and chose to remain in Sicily. The matrons set fire to the ships and Aeneas, having saved all but four of them from destruction, allows all who wish to stay behind to do so (Aen. V.604-761). Giorgio Padoan (“Purgatorio Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), p. 686, argues that Dante's treatment of Aeneid V here differs from that found in Convivio IV.xxvi.11, but the difference can be explained by the fact that in the earlier passage Dante focuses on the willingness of Aeneas to allow the discouraged to stay behind found in Virgil's text itself, while here he judges the malingerers from a different vantage point, the divinely sanctioned imperative to found new Troy in Latium.
This discussion is part of a wider one (pp. 680-88), which returns to Padoan's earlier attempts to alert the reader to the question of which allegorical understanding of the Aeneid governs the reading of Virgil that is manifest in the Commedia. It is possible that, despite such earlier allegorical formulations of the meaning of Virgil's epic as are found in Convivio IV.xxvi.8-9 (or, for Lucan's epic, in Conv. IV.xxviii.13-19), Dante had turned his back on philological allegory as the key to anything central in the Aeneid, and read the poem historically, much as he wanted his own poem to be read. For this argument see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), pp. 78-94, citing D.L.M. Drew's previous arguments for a 'non-allegorical' Aeneid (p. 81n.).
The protagonist's novo pensiero (new thought) has puzzled his commentators. Is it one triggered by what he has seen and heard? Or is he anticipating the matters he will rehearse in his dream in the next canto? Or is the poet merely describing, generically, the way in which the mind works as it flits from subject to subject on the way to sleep (a view that is much present in the commentaries)? In the next canto, a similar phrase will refer to a mental image already experienced (the novella visïon of XIX.56) in his previous dream. Thus here it is at least possible that the 'new thought' is a response to what he has seen or heard. Could he have wondered whether he was himself more like the backsliding Hebrews and Trojans than he is like Joshua or Aeneas? This would seem possible, but not demonstrable. In any case, this unreported thought leads to still others, and these are clearly – because the text tells us so – the matter of his dream.
The verb Dante uses to describe his floating state of consciousness, vaneggiai (rambled), picks up an earlier phrasing, when he compares himself to one who sonnolento vana (rambles in his drowsy mind – verse 87) after Virgil has finished his explanation of love and free will. There he is falling into a fatigue that mirrors the sin purged on this terrace. Here he finally gives in to that weight of somnolence.
Dante's purgatorial dreams are described in cantos IX, XIX, and XXVII, but the second occurs here, in a single line, 'e 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai' (and I transformed my musings into dream). Since in Vita nuova he presents his age as having been nine, eighteen, and twenty-seven for his three main 'encounters' with Beatrice, the poet perhaps wanted to retain those three nine-based and nine-spaced numbers for his three dreams that lead back to her now. For this calculation see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), p. 145.
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Posto avea fine al suo ragionamento
l'alto dottore, e attento guardava
ne la mia vista s'io parea contento;
e io, cui nova sete ancor frugava,
di fuor tacea, e dentro dicea: “Forse
lo troppo dimandar ch'io fo li grava.”
Ma quel padre verace, che s'accorse
del timido voler che non s'apriva,
parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse.
Ond'io: “Maestro, il mio veder s'avviva
sì nel tuo lume, ch'io discerno chiaro
quanto la tua ragion parta o descriva.
Però ti prego, dolce padre caro,
che mi dimostri amore, a cui reduci
ogne buono operare e 'l suo contraro.”
“Drizza,” disse, “ver' me l'agute luci
de lo 'ntelletto, e fieti manifesto
l'error de' ciechi che si fanno duci.
L'animo, ch'è creato ad amar presto,
ad ogne cosa è mobile che piace,
tosto che dal piacere in atto è desto.
Vostra apprensiva da esser verace
tragge intenzione, e dentro a voi la spiega,
sì che l'animo ad essa volger face;
e se, rivolto, inver' di lei si piega,
quel piegare è amor, quell' è natura
che per piacer di novo in voi si lega.
Poi, come 'l foco movesi in altura
per la sua forma ch'è nata a salire
là dove più in sua matera dura,
così l'animo preso entra in disire,
ch'è moto spiritale, e mai non posa
fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire.
Or ti puote apparer quant' è nascosa
la veritate a la gente ch'avvera
ciascun amore in sé laudabil cosa;
però che forse appar la sua matera
sempre esser buona, ma non ciascun segno
è buono, ancor che buona sia la cera.”
“Le tue parole e 'l mio seguace ingegno,”
rispuos' io lui, “m'hanno amor discoverto,
ma ciò m'ha fatto di dubbiar più pregno;
ché, s'amore è di fuori a noi offerto
e l'anima non va con altro piede,
se dritta o torta va, non è suo merto.”
Ed elli a me: “Quanto ragion qui vede,
dir ti poss' io; da indi in là t'aspetta
pur a Beatrice, ch'è opra di fede.
Ogne forma sustanzïal, che setta
è da matera ed è con lei unita,
specifica vertute ha in sé colletta,
la qual sanza operar non è sentita,
né si dimostra mai che per effetto,
come per verdi fronde in pianta vita.
Però, là onde vegna lo 'ntelletto
de le prime notizie, omo non sape,
e de' primi appetibili l'affetto,
che sono in voi sì come studio in ape
di far lo mele; e questa prima voglia
merto di lode o di biasmo non cape.
Or perché a questa ogn' altra si raccoglia
innata v'è la virtù che consiglia,
e de l'assenso de' tener la soglia.
Quest' è 'l principio là onde si piglia
ragion di meritare in voi, secondo
che buoni e rei amori accoglie e viglia.
Color che ragionando andaro al fondo,
s'accorser d'esta innata libertate;
però moralità lasciaro al mondo.
Onde, poniam che di necessitate
surga ogne amor che dentro a voi s'accende,
di ritenerlo è in voi la podestate.
La nobile virtù Beatrice intende
per lo libero arbitrio, e però guarda
che l'abbi a mente, s'a parlar ten prende.”
La luna, quasi a mezza notte tarda,
facea le stelle a noi parer più rade,
fatta com' un secchion che tuttor arda;
e correa contra 'l ciel per quelle strade
che 'l sole infiamma allor che quel da Roma
tra ' Sardi e ' Corsi il vede quando cade.
E quell' ombra gentil per cui si noma
Pietola più che villa mantoana,
del mio carcar diposta avea la soma;
per ch'io, che la ragione aperta e piana
sovra le mie quistioni avea ricolta,
stava com' om che sonnolento vana.
Ma questa sonnolenza mi fu tolta
subitamente da gente che dopo
le nostre spalle a noi era già volta.
E quale Ismeno già vide e Asopo
lungo di sé di notte furia e calca,
pur che i Teban di Bacco avesser uopo,
cotal per quel giron suo passo falca,
per quel ch'io vidi di color, venendo,
cui buon volere e giusto amor cavalca.
Tosto fur sovr' a noi, perché correndo
si movea tutta quella turba magna;
e due dinanzi gridavan piangendo:
“Maria corse con fretta a la montagna;
e Cesare, per soggiogare Ilerda,
punse Marsilia e poi corse in Ispagna.”
“Ratto, ratto, che 'l tempo non si perda
per poco amor,” gridavan li altri appresso,
“che studio di ben far grazia rinverda.”
“O gente in cui fervore aguto adesso
ricompie forse negligenza e indugio
da voi per tepidezza in ben far messo,
questi che vive, e certo i' non vi bugio,
vuole andar sù, pur che 'l sol ne riluca;
però ne dite ond' è presso il pertugio.”
Parole furon queste del mio duca;
e un di quelli spirti disse: “Vieni
di retro a noi, e troverai la buca.
Noi siam di voglia a muoverci sì pieni,
che restar non potem; però perdona,
se villania nostra giustizia tieni.
Io fui abate in San Zeno a Verona
sotto lo 'mperio del buon Barbarossa,
di cui dolente ancor Milan ragiona.
E tale ha già l'un piè dentro la fossa,
che tosto piangerà quel monastero,
e tristo fia d'avere avuta possa;
perché suo figlio, mal del corpo intero,
e de la mente peggio, e che mal nacque,
ha posto in loco di suo pastor vero.”
Io non so se più disse o s'ei si tacque,
tant' era già di là da noi trascorso;
ma questo intesi, e ritener mi piacque.
E quei che m'era ad ogne uopo soccorso
disse: “Volgiti qua: vedine due
venir dando a l'accidïa di morso.”
Di retro a tutti dicean: “Prima fue
morta la gente a cui il mar s'aperse,
che vedesse Iordan le rede sue.
E quella che l'affanno non sofferse
fino a la fine col figlio d'Anchise
sé stessa a vita sanza gloria offerse.”
Poi quando fuor da noi tanto divise
quell' ombre, che veder più non potiersi,
novo pensiero dentro a me si mise,
del qual più altri nacquero e diversi;
e tanto d'uno in altro vaneggiai,
che li occhi per vaghezza ricopersi,
e 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai.
An end had put unto his reasoning
The lofty Teacher, and attent was looking
Into my face, if I appeared content;
And I, whom a new thirst still goaded on,
Without was mute, and said within: "Perchance
The too much questioning I make annoys him."
But that true Father, who had comprehended
The timid wish, that opened not itself,
By speaking gave me hardihood to speak.
Whence I: "My sight is, Master, vivified
So in thy light, that clearly I discern
Whate'er thy speech importeth or describes.
Therefore I thee entreat, sweet Father dear,
To teach me love, to which thou dost refer
Every good action and its contrary."
"Direct," he said, "towards me the keen eyes
Of intellect, and clear will be to thee
The error of the blind, who would be leaders.
The soul, which is created apt to love,
Is mobile unto everything that pleases,
Soon as by pleasure she is waked to action.
Your apprehension from some real thing
An image draws, and in yourselves displays it
So that it makes the soul turn unto it.
And if, when turned, towards it she incline,
Love is that inclination; it is nature,
Which is by pleasure bound in you anew
Then even as the fire doth upward move
By its own form, which to ascend is born,
Where longest in its matter it endures,
So comes the captive soul into desire,
Which is a motion spiritual, and ne'er rests
Until she doth enjoy the thing beloved.
Now may apparent be to thee how hidden
The truth is from those people, who aver
All love is in itself a laudable thing;
Because its matter may perchance appear
Aye to be good; but yet not each impression
Is good, albeit good may be the wax."
"Thy words, and my sequacious intellect,"
I answered him, "have love revealed to me;
But that has made me more impregned with doubt;
For if love from without be offered us,
And with another foot the soul go not,
If right or wrong she go, 'tis not her merit."
And he to me: "What reason seeth here,
Myself can tell thee; beyond that await
For Beatrice, since 'tis a work of faith.
Every substantial form, that segregate
From matter is, and with it is united,
Specific power has in itself collected,
Which without act is not perceptible,
Nor shows itself except by its effect,
As life does in a plant by the green leaves.
But still, whence cometh the intelligence
Of the first notions, man is ignorant,
And the affection for the first allurements,
Which are in you as instinct in the bee
To make its honey; and this first desire
Merit of praise or blame containeth not.
Now, that to this all others may be gathered,
Innate within you is the power that counsels,
And it should keep the threshold of assent.
This is the principle, from which is taken
Occasion of desert in you, according
As good and guilty loves it takes and winnows.
Those who, in reasoning, to the bottom went,
Were of this innate liberty aware,
Therefore bequeathed they Ethics to the world.
Supposing, then, that from necessity
Springs every love that is within you kindled,
Within yourselves the power is to restrain it.
The noble virtue Beatrice understands
By the free will; and therefore see that thou
Bear it in mind, if she should speak of it."
The moon, belated almost unto midnight,
Now made the stars appear to us more rare,
Formed like a bucket, that is all ablaze,
And counter to the heavens ran through those paths
Which the sun sets aflame, when he of Rome
Sees it 'twixt Sardes and Corsicans go down;
And that patrician shade, for whom is named
Pietola more than any Mantuan town,
Had laid aside the burden of my lading;
Whence I, who reason manifest and plain
In answer to my questions had received,
Stood like a man in drowsy reverie.
But taken from me was this drowsiness
Suddenly by a people, that behind
Our backs already had come round to us.
And as, of old, Ismenus and Asopus
Beside them saw at night the rush and throng,
If but the Thebans were in need of Bacchus,
So they along that circle curve their step,
From what I saw of those approaching us,
Who by good-will and righteous love are ridden.
Full soon they were upon us, because running
Moved onward all that mighty multitude,
And two in the advance cried out, lamenting,
"Mary in haste unto the mountain ran,
And Caesar, that he might subdue Ilerda,
Thrust at Marseilles, and then ran into Spain."
"Quick! quick! so that the time may not be lost
By little love!" forthwith the others cried,
"For ardour in well-doing freshens grace!"
"O folk, in whom an eager fervour now
Supplies perhaps delay and negligence,
Put by you in well-doing, through lukewarmness,
This one who lives, and truly I lie not,
Would fain go up, if but the sun relight us;
So tell us where the passage nearest is."
These were the words of him who was my Guide;
And some one of those spirits said: "Come on
Behind us, and the opening shalt thou find;
So full of longing are we to move onward,
That stay we cannot; therefore pardon us,
If thou for churlishness our justice take.
I was San Zeno's Abbot at Verona,
Under the empire of good Barbarossa,
Of whom still sorrowing Milan holds discourse;
And he has one foot in the grave already,
Who shall erelong lament that monastery,
And sorry be of having there had power,
Because his son, in his whole body sick,
And worse in mind, and who was evil-born,
He put into the place of its true pastor."
If more he said, or silent was, I know not,
He had already passed so far beyond us;
But this I heard, and to retain it pleased me.
And he who was in every need my succour
Said: "Turn thee hitherward; see two of them
Come fastening upon slothfulness their teeth."
In rear of all they shouted: "Sooner were
The people dead to whom the sea was opened,
Than their inheritors the Jordan saw;
And those who the fatigue did not endure
Unto the issue, with Anchises' son,
Themselves to life withouten glory offered."
Then when from us so separated were
Those shades, that they no longer could be seen,
Within me a new thought did entrance find,
Whence others many and diverse were born;
And so I lapsed from one into another,
That in a reverie mine eyes I closed,
And meditation into dream transmuted.
This canto continues the flow of the last with no demarcation in the text itself of a terminus or of a new beginning. As Bosco points out in his introductory note to the two cantos, they form a unit developed on a chiastic pattern:
XVII.1-69 (narrative)
XVII.70-139 (instruction)
XVIII.1-75 (instruction)
XVIII.76-145 (narrative)
Further, these two cantos form a larger unit with Purgatorio XVI, which is similarly divided into two large blocks of material: 1-63 (narrative) and 64-145 (Marco's instruction). In this way the numerical center of the Commedia, cantos 49-51, is made more noticeable. (For the midpoint with respect to the number of lines in the poem, see the note to Purg. XVII.118-119.)
Pier Giorgio Ricci (“Il Canto XVIII del Purgatorio,” in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1970]), p. 252, suggests that Dante spreads Virgil's full canto's worth (145 verses) of speechifying over two cantos so as not to strain the reader's patience.
Virgil's 'Scholastic' credentials seem strong. See Giuseppe Tarozzi's appreciation (Il canto XVIII del “Purgatorio” [“Lectura Dantis Orsanmichele”] [Florence: Sansoni, 1901]), p. 7: Virgil 'here represents the idealized figure of the medieval docent.' A close analysis of his discourse in the preceding canto, such as may be found, in English, in Singleton's commentary, reveals a line of argument that is closely based on Thomistic texts. In keeping with such discourse and for the first time since Inferno XVI.48, Virgil is saluted by his pupil as 'professor' (dottore). For the other terms used to describe Virgil's role as guide in the poem, see the note to Inferno II.140. (Virgil is referred to as dottore elsewhere as follows: Inf. V.70, Inf. V.123, Inf. XVI.13, Inf. XVI.48, Purg. XXI.22, Purg. XXI.131, Purg. XXIV.14).
In fact, Virgil has rarely been referred to or addressed by Dante with such fervent admiration as here and shortly later in this canto, when he will be 'padre verace' (true father – 7), 'Maestro' (Master – 10), and then 'father' again (13). See the note to vv. 17-18.
In this and the next canto the protagonist's forward movement in understanding is underlined by the adjective nuovo (new): used here for his new 'thirst,' at verse 141 for his 'new thought' in reaction to the departure of the penitents in Sloth, and at Purg. XIX.56, in his reference to the new dream he has just had on this terrace.
Dante's 'timid wish' should probably be considered related to intellectual sloth (see Purg. XVII.130, lento amore [laggard love]). How could Dante have considered himself 'timid' in seeking the truth? Had he involved himself in a less than urgent affection for the good, the charge would seem appropriate. Since it is the author who makes the charge, it might seem that he himself believed that he did not always display the zeal necessary for loving well.
Why, one might ask, after Virgil's long speech in the last canto, should Dante want Virgil to 'expound' love when he seems just now to have finished (with suitable fanfare) doing precisely that? What the protagonist means is 'expatiate upon,' 'explain more precisely,' the argument just now presented. The word dimostrare is here, in fact, a verb based on the Latin noun demonstratio, as used to refer to the development of proofs by means of syllogistic demonstration. See Paradiso XXIV.96.
Virgil's words reflect Matthew 15:14, where Jesus says that the Pharisees are blind guides of the blind who follow them, adding that guide and flock shall all end up falling into a ditch.
In Convivio I.xi.4 Dante cites this passage, directing its barb against 'those wicked Italians who praise the vernacular of others while disparaging their own' (Conv. I.xi.1) and who are therefore likewise headed toward disaster. As Francesco Mazzoni argues (“Latini, Brunetto” [ED.1971.3], p. 580b), in this connection it is difficult not to think of Dante's fellow Florentine Brunetto Latini, who wrote his encyclopedic Tresor in French rather than in his native vernacular (see André Pézard [Dante sous la pluie de feu (Paris: Vrin, 1950)] for extensive development of this idea). Also to be considered are the words, written shortly before or shortly after this passage (on the problems of dating Dve and Conv. see Hollander [Dante: A Life in Works (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001)], pp. 54-55), in De vulgari eloquentia I.xiii.1, when Dante 'exiles' Brunetto from the illustrious and courtly vernacular that he is championing, relegating him to the ash heap of the municipal vernacular, the 'street talk' that is to be avoided by serious poets. In what seems to have been a change of heart, Brunetto, in the fifteenth canto of Inferno, will be treated generously as Dante's vernacular 'teacher' (Inf. XV.85), just as Virgil was his first Latin guide. It seems clear that these two are joined only by Guido Guinizzelli as explicitly paternal figures of writerly authority for the Tuscan poet.
Dante refers to, whether as protagonist or as poet, various 'fathers' in the course of the poem (this is to exclude 'fathers' addressed by other characters). Of those listed below, those numbered 2, 3, 4, 6, 8 are only addressed or referred to once; all the others have at least two other paternal moments for Dante, except for St. Bernard, who has only one other; Virgil leads all 'fathers' with a dozen other occurrences. Of these twelve 'fathers,' seven are addressed, those numbered 1, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12. The parenthetic reference is to the first appearance of each 'father.'
(1) Virgil (Inf. VIII.110)
(2) Brunetto Latini (Inf. XV.83)
(3) Cato of Utica (Purg. I.33)
(4) Guido Guinizzelli (Purg. XXVI.97)
(5) God (addressed as 'good Apollo,' Par. I.28)
(6) St. Francis (Par. XI.85)
(7) Cacciaguida (Par. XVI.16)
(8) St. Benedict (Par. XXII.58)
(9) the sun (Par. XXII.116)
(10) St. Peter (Par. XXIV.62)
(11) Adam (Par. XXVI.92)
(12) St. Bernard (Par. XXXI.63)
Frank Ordiway's lengthy article, “Brunetto and Dante,” completed in draft ca. 1992 but still under revision, offers detailed analysis of the program of Dante's 'fathers' in the poem. See, for his first treatment of this material, his doctoral dissertation (Dante, Chaucer, and the Poetics of the Past [unpublished doctoral dissertation, Princeton University, 1990]).
Virgil, responding to Dante's request, carries his analysis of the loving human mind to the next level, the role of the rational soul in determining human choice and, therefore, action. This tercet establishes the subject of Virgil's difficult clarification (vv. 22-39): how mind (the rational soul, created directly by God and instilled in the embryo last [see Purg. XXV.67-75]) reacts appetitively to external things.
The apprensiva (power of perception), already implicitly referred to in Dante's apostrophe of the imaginativa (faculty of imagination) in Purgatorio XVII.13-15, is the faculty of perception that reacts to the capturing of an image (referred to here as an intenzione) of external reality in the imaginazione or fantasia (see the note to verse 13-18). The mind, as opposed to the 'natural desire' of the senses (see Purg. XVII.93 for this distinction), which is always errorless, is responsible for its choices and may err. If its perception inclines toward what it contemplates, that is what we call love.
For a discussion of this passage in light of the Aristotelian and Arabic roots of Dante's word intenzione, see the entry for that term by Tullio Gregory (ED.1971.3), pp. 480b-481b.
Desire, love in action, now continues by extending toward its goal and remaining in this state as long as it takes pleasure in its appetition. (For fire as an example of 'natural desire,' see the note to Purg. XVII.91-92.) Thus here Dante is comparing intellectual desire to natural desire, but also insisting on the distance between them. Natural desire can never be culpable (e.g., fire always 'desires' to rise – that is its natural inclination). There is perhaps no moment in the poem of greater danger to its essential philosophical position. Is human desire – for money, food, or sexual pleasure – not as 'natural' as this? Does anyone not desire these things? Dante's attempt to persuade us, as he may well have realized, reflects that of another dottore and maestro, Jesus. He, as the Gospels amply testify, also spoke frequently, in his parables, in terms of human desires that all could understand, e.g., of money, agriculture, marriage. In all cases the listener is encouraged, even impelled, to understand that such pleasures, as great as they may be, will seem as nothing compared to the joys of Heaven.
Padoan (“Purgatorio Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), pp. 668-70, suggests that Dante's definition of love in this canto intrinsically corrects Francesca's claims for the ineluctable nature of passionate love (Inf. V.103).
Dante was surely right to let his language here reflect an essentially sexual view of love. Consider the last verse of this part of the passage, 'fin che la cosa amata il fa gioire' (as long as it enjoys the thing it loves [for this understanding of the conjunction fin che see Francesco Mazzoni, cited by Bosco/Reggio in their commentary on this passage; in opposition, reading 'until it attains the thing it loves' as being more Thomistic, see Alfred A. Triolo (Purgatorio XVIII,“ in Dante's ”Divine Comedy,“ Introductory Readings II: ”Purgatorio,“ ed. Tibor Wlassics [Lectura Dantis (virginiana), 12, supplement, Charlottesville: University of Virginia, 1993]), p. 268]). Arriving at this point in the argument, a reader would have to be pardoned for believing that whatever good the spirit of love pursues is ipso facto good, just as the protagonist himself will shortly seem to believe (vv. 43-45). But what is the nature of the 'moto spiritale' (movement of the spirit) of the 'captive mind'? That question is reflected in the crucial and concluding portion of Virgil's discourse.
The main candidates for this unenviable denomination, the errant folk who believe that all love is good (a proposition, as we have seen, that we might have considered unassailable a moment ago), have been Epicureans. In the modern period this view is first offered by Scartazzini (comm. to verse 35) but then is held by many twentieth-century commentators. Grabher (comm. to vv. 19-39) is of the opinion that this is the position of all love poets, including the younger Dante. His view, sometimes combined with that of Scartazzini, has grown increasingly attractive to recent commentators. Clearly, anyone who believes that love is in itself and always praiseworthy is among this group.
The 'imprint' on the 'wax' of our love becomes the crucial symbolic expression of the concept developed here. The 'wax' clearly refers to the innate human potential to love, which is 'stamped' by the image that the mind has extracted from reality; that 'stamp' may either be worthy or unworthy, while the 'wax' is always worthy.
It is, despite Virgil's last insistence on the (implicit) need for the proper exercise of the free will in choosing the objects of one's desire, understandable that Dante, up to this point, believes that the mind is completely responsive to internalized (by the apprensiva) external stimuli (the intenzione – see verse 23), and thus irreprehensible in whatever choice it makes.
This passage offers perhaps the only apparently material evidence in the poem that would tie both Virgil and Beatrice to an allegorical status, his role being that of Reason, hers, Faith. But see Hollander (”Purgatorio II: The New Song and the Old,“ Lectura Dantis [virginiana] 6 [1990]), p. 42, n. 2: 'It is from Virgil's lips that we first hear the name Beatrice... in Purgatorio: VI.46; XV.77; XVIII.48. In her first three nominal presences in this cantica... she is associated first with hope (VI.32), then with love (XV.68; XV.71; XV,74), then with faith.' Thus associated with the three theological virtues, Beatrice can be seen as possessing all of them; she probably should not be seen as representing any one of them, or as having an 'allegorical' status in this poem.
In keeping with all of the ratiocination found in this canto, words for 'reason' in various noun and verb forms are found in it far more than in any other (Purg. XXII finishes a distant second with four occurrences), as follows: vv. 1, 12, 46, 65, 67, 85, 120.
The three cantos at the center of Purgatorio devote what may seem immoderate space to what Benedetto Croce disliked in Dante, his 'non-poesia,' his 'structure,' his mere allotria (the 'extraneous matter' of philosophy or theology that Croce deprecated in Dante; opposing such views, Fernando Salsano [”Purgatorio Canto XV,“ in Lectura Dantis Scaligera (Florence: Le Monnier, 1967)], p. 542, speaks of the Comedy as 'un poema e non un libro di poesie'). For an examination of what Croce's kind of aestheticizing denies to Dante's poem, precisely the validity and beauty of its conceptual structure, see Giorgio Stabile (”Cosmologia e teologia nella Commedia: la caduta di Lucifero e il rovesciamento del mondo,“ Letture classensi 12 [1983]), pp. 139-44. Stabile is surely correct in arguing that Croce's oppositional binome structure/poetry fails to account for the aesthetic possibilities of Dante's versified conceptual thinking. Marco's long speech in XVI (65-129), Virgil's in XVII (91-139), and Virgil's concluding two in this canto (16-39; 49-75) should be looked upon, as should the related discursive portions of Cantos XXIV and XXV, as part of a continuing development of a complex statement about the nature and function of love, presented from different vantage points. In Canto XXIV, Dante's presentation of the Holy Spirit's creative role in helping to make the writings of a handful of poets acceptable to God prepares for the following treatment in Canto XXV of the way the Holy Spirit is breathed into all of us, thus explaining how eventually a very few of us may become acceptable to God as His saints in paradise. In these three cantos Marco the Lombard explains the need for proper civil governance because our free will may elsewise lead us astray, while Virgil takes up a related topic, the need for us individually to use our free will correctly in choosing and responding to the objects of our attention and affection.
The only 'substantial form' to be both distinct from matter and joined to it is the human soul, which is formed by pure divine intellect (as are the angels) and by emotional and vegetative powers (as are the beasts). Its specifica vertute (defining disposition), as we learn at vv. 55-57, is composed of primal intellect and primal will, and is only perceptible in the action of the soul, not in itself. Now, leaving intellection out of consideration, Virgil continues: We have no recollection or current understanding of our original inclination (to love God), yet we do demonstrate its presence in us, as the eagerness of bees for making honey reveals their 'defining disposition.' This kind of (natural) will exists beyond and before moral assent.
This innate will (see Purg. XXI.105, la virtù che vuole [the power that wills]) must accord with la virtù che consiglia ('the faculty that counsels'), the higher intellect that should govern all our choices; our ability to choose good and to discard wrongful affections is the ground for the measurement of our moral condition.
Aristotle's Ethics is probably Dante's main source for his views on morality (a view supported by Benvenuto da Imola [comm. to vv. 67-75]). However, to account for the plurality of the reference, Poletto (comm. to these verses) sensibly refers to Dante's own earlier phrasing (found in the words of his guide, Virgil), 'I speak of Aristotle and of Plato / and of many others' (Purg. III.43-44).
Virgil's lengthy discourse concludes with his final insistence on the pivotal role of free will in individual moral responsibility and looks forward (as Benvenuto was perhaps the first to realize [see his comm. to vv. 67-75]) to Beatrice's remarks on the subject in Paradiso V.19-24, asseverating that the freedom of the will is the greatest of God's gifts to humankind. Many of the early commentators find this a convenient place for them to reassert the 'allegorical' valence of Beatrice, here interpreted as 'Theology.' In the past 150 years most commentators are content to leave the allegorical equation in abeyance, merely referring to Beatrice as herself.
Returning to narrative, the poet returns to telling the time. The moon, as the slowest 'planet' in Dante's astronomy, is fittingly the celestial body referred to on the terrace of Sloth. Its appearance is compared by Benvenuto (comm. to these lines) to the semicircular fire in a lighthouse, glowing throughout the night. Commentators are divided as to exactly what is involved here, i.e., whether it is the moon's rising that is referred to or its current position in the sky. Singleton's discussion (comm. to vv. 76-78) resuscitates Edward Moore's early essay (The Time References in the ”Divina Commedia“ [London 1887]) to support the notion that there is no reference here to moonrise (the cause of endless resultant debate in the commentaries about the precise hour that would then be indicated), but to the moon being high enough in the sky to dim the brightness of the stars at the approach of midnight.
The moon, Dante would seem to be saying, was roughly on the same path taken by the sun when it sets in the southwest (when seen from Rome) in late November, between Sardinia and Corsica.
The protagonist's gratitude to Virgil is expressed with a salute to his birthplace, Pietola ('Andes' in Roman times). Some early commentators read the phrase 'più che villa mantoana' to mean 'more than the city Mantua,' while the meaning is nearly certainly 'more than any Mantuan town,' i.e., any other town in the vicinity of the city, not Mantua itself, as Padoan (”Purgatorio Canto XVIII,“ in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), p. 688n., agrees.
Again a detail – Dante's somnolence – establishes a connection with Sloth.
These penitents, as opposed to the wrathful, move in the same counterclockwise direction that is followed by Dante and Virgil. It would seem that, while the movement of Dante to the right is morally determined, that of the penitents is not, is rather the result of aesthetic considerations. Review of the various groups that are in motion suggests that such is the case. Below the gate, we see that the excommunicate are moving rightwards (Purg. III.59), while the late-repentant seem to be heading to the left (Purg. V.23). On the terraces, the prideful seem to be moving right (Purg. X.100), while the wrathful are headed left (Purg. XV.142). Here in Sloth the penitents come from behind Virgil and Dante but are moving in the same direction (Purg. XVIII.90). Farther up the mountain the penitent gluttons are also moving counterclockwise (Purg. XXIII.19-20), while the two distinct bands of the lustful proceed in two different directions (Purg. XXVI.29).
This is a fairly rare occurrence in Purgatorio, a simile based explicitly on classical materials (but see Purg. IX.34-42, for the similetic reference to Statius's Achilles). And there will not be another (now based on a passage in Lucan) until Purgatorio XXIV.64-69.
Ismenus and Asopus are names of rivers, the first flowing through the city of Thebes, the second near it. Beginning with Jacopo della Lana (comm. to these verses), commentators have offered the opinion, from time to time, that Dante's source here is Statius (Thebaid IX). Ismenos is named at IX.404, his 'brother' Asopos at IX.449. That passage includes two references to the orgiastic Bacchic rites (IX.434-436; 478-480) to which Dante here refers.
Running in a group to counteract the painful memory of their solitary slothful behaviors on earth, all these gathered penitents may put contemporary readers in mind of the massed crowds of runners in metropolitan marathons.
With the exception of the concluding interaction with the angel in the following canto, separated by Dante's sleep and dream from the action on the fourth terrace, all the usual 'events' of any terrace are here condensed – in the compressed style appropriate to the description of the newly zealous – into these forty verses. All terraces include the following features in the same order: (1) description of the physical aspect of the terrace, (2) exemplars of the countering virtue, (3) description of the penitents, (4) recitation of their sins by particular penitents, (5) exemplars of the vice, (6) appearance to Dante of the angel representing the opposing virtue.
We might want to reflect on the extraordinary artisanship of the presentation of the exemplary material on the earlier terraces, things not matched by what we find in earlier medieval poems: the 'speaking' (and odoriferous) intaglios of Pride, the voices streaking overhead in Envy, the ecstatic visions of Wrath. It is as though Dante had used up all the brilliant new techniques of presentation of which he could think and now, for the rest of the ascent, subsides to the perfectly acceptable artistic level of utterance, leaving us to marvel at what he had done before. On three of the last four terraces the names (sometimes accompanied by reference to significant deeds) of all exemplary figures are simply called out by the penitents, while on the terrace of Gluttony, in a variant, the two trees do the talking.
Petrocchi's punctuation of this passage and of that devoted to the final exemplary figures, vv. 133-138, is probably not well conceived. Since there are two voices speaking, and since each pair of examples is divided by the copulative 'e' (and), it seems nearly certain that each voice recites a single example. Thus the 'e' in both passages should, alone, be outside quotation marks, thus marking each of the two statements as being registered by a different voice. Otherwise, what use was there in having two anonymous voices giving the examples? Scartazzini (comm. to verse 99) points out that the first two speakers, by virtue of leading the pack, are intrinsically the 'fastest' and thus most qualified to offer the positive exempla, while the last two, bringing up the rear, most appropriately give forth the negative ones. See also Pier Giorgio Ricci (”Il Canto XVIII del Purgatorio,“ in Nuove letture dantesche, vol. IV [Florence: Le Monnier, 1970]), pp. 260-63, discussing the paired voices and the problem with the punctuation adopted by Petrocchi.
Some of the earliest commentators believe that the reference is to the precipitous escape from Herod's decree and the flight of the holy family into Egypt (a misinterpretation that surfaced again in the Renaissance in the commentaries of Landino and Vellutello). However, beginning with Pietro di Dante (Pietro1, comm. to verse 100) the obvious citation of Luke 1:39 has been recognized as governing this example. Mary, having been told by Gabriel during the Annunciation of Elizabeth's miraculous pregnancy in her old age (which will result in the birth of John the Baptist), 'abiit in montana cum festinatione... et salutavit Elisabeth' (went with good speed into the hill country... and offered her salutation to Elizabeth).
The Roman example paired with Mary is none other than Julius Caesar. It is notable that in Lucan (Phars. III.453) Caesar's rushing off to do battle in Spain is not the result of military strategy but of his being bored (inpatiens) with the prolonged efforts to lay siege to Marseilles. Further, his eventual victory at Lerida is described by Lucan as being the result of fortunate changes in the weather (Phars. IV.48-49). Thus Dante's praise of him here is clearly at odds with Lucan's (always) withering scorn for the Great Man whom he so desperately despises. For the entire question of Dante's divided view of Julius Caesar, in one view the first, God-sent emperor of Rome, in another the destroyer of the Republic and of Roman virtue, see Stull and Hollander (”The Lucanian Source of Dante's Ulysses,“ Studi Danteschi 63 [1991 (1997)]), pp. 33-43. This is one of Julius's few positive moments in Dante's poem; and Dante needed to disregard Lucan's views in order to present him favorably. John of Serravalle's gloss (to vv. 97-102) might have pleased him: 'Cesar fuit recte inimicus accidie, fuit valde sollicitus. Semper dicebat militibus: Venite; nunquam dixit: Ite' (Caesar was indeed an enemy to sloth, a pronouncedly zealous one at that. He was always calling to his soldiers 'Come' and never once said 'Go'). For Dante's previous and next far less favorable references to Julius, see the notes to Purgatorio IX.133-138 and XXVI.76-78.
On every other terrace the penitents have a prayer that they speak in common when they are not interrupted by other forms of observance or by conversation with Dante and Virgil (see Purg. XI.1-24; XIII.50-51; XVI.19; XIX.73; XXIII.11; XXV.121). The terrace of Sloth offers the only exception, as though the previous acedia of these penitents took from them the privilege of Christian prayer. The gloss of Carroll (to vv. 103-105) is interesting: 'The idea seems... to be the danger of contemplation of good deeds, without an eager and immediate effort to imitate them. Mere ”study“ of them may end in the ”little love“ which produces sloth. It is only when ”study“ is accompanied by action that it ”makes grace bud again.'' For Dante, a man devoted to the pursuit of the morally engaged active life, certain occasions for prayer perhaps appeared to offer a potential escape from one's civil and religious duty in the world. Men and women of such disposition are thus, here in their penitence, denied the comfort of prayer until such time as prayer will be totally zealous, not the occasion for a moment of repose from worldly responsibility or, for that matter, from proper monastic exertion. Acedia was frequently associated with improper monastic otium, a withdrawal from the world but from one's duty to God, as well, surely a great temptation in the relative ease allowed by monastic life.'
The phrase 'per poco amor' (for lack of love) and the word 'studio' (the Italian equivalent of the Latin word for 'zeal') combine to underline the defining vice and virtue of this terrace.
Virgil's 'perhaps' is a gentle act of politesse on his part: these penitents were guilty of precisely what he describes.
The extreme courtesy of this speaker cancels whatever thoughts of villania (discourtesy) Dante or we might have. His identity – such as it is – will be revealed immediately.
San Zeno, just outside the city of Verona (and, by common consent, one of the most beautiful churches in Italy), was also the site of a monastery. Its nameless abbot, who speaks here, is generally identified as Gherardo II, who served, during the reign of the Emperor Frederick I, from 1163 until his death in 1187. Frederick Barbarossa, emperor (from 1152 until his death in 1190) as Frederick I, was a grandfather of Frederick II (emperor 1215-1250). Dante's overall opinion of him is difficult to measure, since he so rarely refers to him, but in the two passages that do invoke his presence, here and in Epistle VI.20, his destruction of Milan in 1162 for its anti-imperial activities is clearly applauded. On the question of Dante's views of Barbarossa see Bruno Nardi (“Dante e il buon Barbarossa,” L'Alighieri 7 [1966], pp. 3-27).
For the less than likely possibility that the adjective 'buon' (good) that precedes his name is here to be taken ironically, see Tommaseo's commentary to this passage. One may add that the thirty occasions in the Commedia on which a reader finds the epithet combined with a name or title (e.g., 'buon Marzucco,' 'buon maestro') do not reveal a single one in which an ironic reading seems warranted.
Dante, welcomed by the Scaligeri family to Verona in 1303-4, there enjoyed the first happy time of his exile. His memories of those rulers of the city give rise to a post-eventum prophecy. Alberto della Scala was lord of Verona until his death in 1301, by which time he had appointed his lame, illegitimate son, Giuseppe (1263-1313), to serve as abbot of the monastery (in 1292), for the rest of his days. Alberto was succeeded by his eldest legitimate son, Bartolommeo, nearly certainly Dante's first host in Verona. Upon Bartolommeo's death, in 1304, Alberto's second son, Alboino, became lord (many believe that Dante and Alboino did not get along, thus explaining Dante's departure from Verona ca. 1304), a position he held until his death in 1311, when he was succeeded by Cangrande della Scala, the third legitimate son and Dante's patron and host when the poet returned to Verona ca. 1314.
The nameless abbot is moving so quickly that Dante cannot tell whether he has finished speaking or has simply moved too far ahead to be heard while continuing to speak – a nice final touch to convey the zeal with which he is exercising his penitence.
For the reason that there are two anonymous speakers and for the probable punctuation of vv. 133-138, see the note to vv. 99-102.
The first example of the sin of Sloth indicates the Hebrews who, having made the passage through the Red Sea, grew restive under Moses' guidance and died of plague before the completed exodus across Jordan into the Promised Land accomplished only by Joshua and Caleb. See Numbers 14:1-38 and Deuteronomy 1:26-40.
Similarly, some of Aeneas's companions, egged on by Iris, disguised as the wife of Doryclus, rebelled against the leadership of Aeneas and chose to remain in Sicily. The matrons set fire to the ships and Aeneas, having saved all but four of them from destruction, allows all who wish to stay behind to do so (Aen. V.604-761). Giorgio Padoan (“Purgatorio Canto XVIII,” in Lectura Dantis Scaligera [Florence: Le Monnier, 1967 (1964)]), p. 686, argues that Dante's treatment of Aeneid V here differs from that found in Convivio IV.xxvi.11, but the difference can be explained by the fact that in the earlier passage Dante focuses on the willingness of Aeneas to allow the discouraged to stay behind found in Virgil's text itself, while here he judges the malingerers from a different vantage point, the divinely sanctioned imperative to found new Troy in Latium.
This discussion is part of a wider one (pp. 680-88), which returns to Padoan's earlier attempts to alert the reader to the question of which allegorical understanding of the Aeneid governs the reading of Virgil that is manifest in the Commedia. It is possible that, despite such earlier allegorical formulations of the meaning of Virgil's epic as are found in Convivio IV.xxvi.8-9 (or, for Lucan's epic, in Conv. IV.xxviii.13-19), Dante had turned his back on philological allegory as the key to anything central in the Aeneid, and read the poem historically, much as he wanted his own poem to be read. For this argument see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), pp. 78-94, citing D.L.M. Drew's previous arguments for a 'non-allegorical' Aeneid (p. 81n.).
The protagonist's novo pensiero (new thought) has puzzled his commentators. Is it one triggered by what he has seen and heard? Or is he anticipating the matters he will rehearse in his dream in the next canto? Or is the poet merely describing, generically, the way in which the mind works as it flits from subject to subject on the way to sleep (a view that is much present in the commentaries)? In the next canto, a similar phrase will refer to a mental image already experienced (the novella visïon of XIX.56) in his previous dream. Thus here it is at least possible that the 'new thought' is a response to what he has seen or heard. Could he have wondered whether he was himself more like the backsliding Hebrews and Trojans than he is like Joshua or Aeneas? This would seem possible, but not demonstrable. In any case, this unreported thought leads to still others, and these are clearly – because the text tells us so – the matter of his dream.
The verb Dante uses to describe his floating state of consciousness, vaneggiai (rambled), picks up an earlier phrasing, when he compares himself to one who sonnolento vana (rambles in his drowsy mind – verse 87) after Virgil has finished his explanation of love and free will. There he is falling into a fatigue that mirrors the sin purged on this terrace. Here he finally gives in to that weight of somnolence.
Dante's purgatorial dreams are described in cantos IX, XIX, and XXVII, but the second occurs here, in a single line, 'e 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai' (and I transformed my musings into dream). Since in Vita nuova he presents his age as having been nine, eighteen, and twenty-seven for his three main 'encounters' with Beatrice, the poet perhaps wanted to retain those three nine-based and nine-spaced numbers for his three dreams that lead back to her now. For this calculation see Hollander (Allegory in Dante's “Commedia” [Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969]), p. 145.
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